Hello from L’isle
Jourdain, France! I have been very busy with my host family and the internet has been down, which
explains my lack of posting. Lots of
interesting things have happened since I last posted. I finished my last week at Purpan.
On Monday and Tuesday, I saw a few Purpan
students give presentations about agri-business in English. This presentation was for a degree in food
science in an English speaking setting.
It’s a two year program that teaches the students English along with
having internship in France related to the food industry. Students then present what they did in their
internship in English. Most of the
students did very well, and I can honestly say I was jealous of their ability
to speak a second language well enough to give a presentation! In the afternoon, we had French class.
On Wednesday, we had a French cooking class. We broke into teams and each team made a
dish. One team made a radish salad and bruschetta. My team made a pastry using
duck, potatoes, carrots, and herbs. The
last team made cookies and a pudding.
The pudding had cantaloupe on the top and a white wine mousse on the
bottom. It tasted fantastic! That night, we had a farewell potluck. Brittney, Natalie, and I brought
cheesecake. The ingredients weren't what
Brittney traditionally uses and we had to cook the pies on plates, but they
ended up tasting great!
On Thursday morning,
I visited a Delpeyrat pâte and foie gras processing factory. It was cool to see how the product went from
duck carcass to the food found on the grocery shelf. In the afternoon, we went to Gers Fairne,
which is a flour mill. I didn't realize
so much went into making flour! We saw
all the machines required to make flour and the processes it goes through to go
from grain to packaged item.
Friday was
exam day. I had an oral and listening
exam in French in the morning. In the
afternoon I gave a presentation on cheese.
I think both went well. On
Saturday I went to Toulouse with some friends.
We went to the natural history museum and enjoyed the nice weather. On Sunday, I left for my internship.
My original
internship did not work out. The surgery
room’s lift and harness at the veterinary hospital I was going to have my
internship at broke. The veterinarian
lost most of his patients for the next month while the repairs are being made
to the surgery room. Consequently, that
means I could not take the internship with the equine veterinarian as originally
planned. Instead, I am living on a donkey
farm with a host family. The host family
is very welcoming and there are always people around the house. They milk donkeys, make soap, and run a bed and
breakfast. The donkey milk is used to
make soap and ice cream. The ice cream
tastes great! I have already milked
donkeys and made soap. I do daily chores
like cleaning the barn and feeding. I
have learned new skills such as putting up electric fences and cleaning stitches
post-surgery. I gave two injections
today using the tenting procedure I learned in ANSC 103. Hooray for using animal science 4,000+ miles
away from where I learned it! Despite
the internship being different than I anticipated, I am happy that I am able to
take my internship here.
Here’s a
link (in English) to the farm I am staying at:
I’ll post
photos later since they take a long time to upload and my computer is about to die.
No comments:
Post a Comment