"I've decided snow is pretty to look at but annoying to walk in"

IT'S SO SNOWY!!!! It's actually not that snowy at all compared to the feet of snow dumped throughout the U.S., but there is definitely enough snow around here to make life just a bit more obnoxious than it would otherwise be. Here are some pictures of the snow and what we've decided to do about/with it :)


LIDL! Four of us girls were feeling a bit lonely for familiar things of our country...Cari, who's from Oklahoma, and I often lament the fact that even the Sprite tastes different over here...and Aleksandra found a Lidl, which is a grocery store kind of like Aldi, here in Clermont-Ferrand. They also have Lidl in Poland and Ireland, so going there was like a little bit of home for she and Chantelle. It was a long walk to get there, but definitely worth it!


A beautiful fountain in one of the Clermont-Ferrand parks--I always love fountains with icicles; they remind me of Narnia when the White Witch can just freeze anything in an instant.


This is a pot full of a tasty Polish dessert...it's called Kisiel and it's sort of like Jell-o but not really at all. It comes as a powder in a packet and you mix the powder with water and some sugar then heat it all on the stove. As you heat it the mixture becomes sort of gelatinous. Evidently you can wait for it to cool down and eat it then or you can eat it while it's still hot. We ate it while it was hot. It tastes good, but I can't really describe what it tastes like.


Here are my friends Chantelle (from Ireland, on the right) and Aleksandra (from Poland, on the left) making snow angels...Chantelle had never seen "real" snow before this and she's the one who made the profound discovery about walking in snow that became the title of this post :)


Aleksandra (middle), Chantelle (right) and I after we made the Polish dessert...we had quite the self-timer adventure while making this picture happen! Our neighbors probably thought we were crazy; just moments before, a couple French guys who were boiling a huge pot of potatoes wandered through the kitchen to check on their food and found us giggling and dancing while making the dessert, then once we got back they probably overheard all our commotion of running from the camera to the door to make the photo happen...hope we weren't too loud!


Cari (left), Chantelle (middle) and I one of our first nights here in Clermont-Ferrand. We watched the movie "Annie" that night; it was lovely :)


Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, I hope you have a wonderful day!