French Boxing

Last night my host family and I went out to a very expensive restaurant for dinner. We had four courses, and it took several hours, I felt so French. I didn't understand the menu at all, neither did Marion. It would be ok if they wrote "fish with rice and mushrooms" in French, but of course they have to use very complex and sophisticated names that no one has heard of. The first course for me was this little puffy mound that turned out to be fish (it didn't taste like fish), the next was a salad of sausage slices and beans covered with some dressing. I know that explanation makes it sound like pork and beans, but it wasn't, it was very classy, I promise. My main course was more fish mounds (a different type) and a perfectly molded little pile of rice, it was all topped with an orangey yellow sauce, tiny shrimp, and chives. My dessert was a really light chocolate cake and a ball of icecream. It was all amazing, and I'm surprised I liked it, I didn't think I'd like Fancy French Food.

I went to PE class today, badmitton (is that spelled right) racket in hand, but I opened the door to the gym and found it filled with chairs and a stage. Today was the inaugeration of the new buildings and track that have been built at my school. So we went to the other gym on the other side of campus and were told that today we would do circus and boxing. Circus?? It turned out to be juggling, balancing, playing with Diablo sticks, unicycling, etc. We did this all for the first hour. At the beginning of the class about a thousand parents came through to check out the new gym that had been built before moving on to the track and the other building to cut the ribbon. There was also a man with a video camera which he pointed at us and told us tod smile and do something interesting. We ran upstairs.

Boxing was great. When they dragged out a huge box filled with boxing gloves I was a bit skeptical- wasn't this dangerous? But I ended up enjoying myself immensely. We paired up and learned the different punches and practiced them and at the end had little boxing matches. They made a big deal of saying this was FRENCH boxing, not American boxing. Yes, there is a difference. You kick in French boxing. You are only allowed to kick with the top of your foot to the outside of your opponents outer thigh/hip, but still, this makes everything more challenging. You can't just focus on guarding yourself against upper body blows, you need to keep dodging your neighbors feet as well. Though I lost both the matches I was in (with two of the Mexican girls) I only lost by one point each time, and the instructor pointed at me and said I was really good. Maybe I should take up boxing while I'm here...