Painting, dancing and keeping busy

When I asked my host parents about their hobbies, they were quick to answer.

My host mom likes to paint. The room upstairs next to mine is set up as her studio, and her beautiful paintings are on display all over the rest of the house. Every Wednesday evening, she attends a paint class to learn new techniques...

I went with her to observe the class. Their exercise was to crumple a piece of paper and then paint the outcome using different colors.

Some people chose to work on last week's assignment of painting an object--such as the red jacket in the above picture. Even though the lesson was in French, I enjoyed walking around, watching everyone's progress. I also spent time drawing a sketch that I might *try* (key word) to paint with my host mom in her studio sometime.

In addition to art class, my host mom also attends a weekly English class. She really wants to improve her English, and having conversations with me is the perfect way for her to do that. :)

Since she doesn't work, we spend a lot of time together during the day--cooking, walking, visiting friends, shopping--and practicing English the whole time. Today she said, "I am very tired. Speaking English is so tiring!" Haha.

When I asked my host dad about what he likes to do in his spare time, he said (and I quote), "My number one hobby is rock n' roll club. And my number two hobby is--how do you say?--gliding? Oh. Paragliding."

Rock n' roll club and paragliding!? Nice.

Unfortunately, it's not the right time of year for paragliding, but it's never too cold for rock n' roll. :)

I went with him to his dance class the other night and had an absolute blast!! I tried to upload a video of him dancing (he's a really good dancer), but it's loading waaay too slowly to post right now.

What I can post now is a YouTube video of my host dad's favorite singer, Johnny Hallyday. After dinner last night, we watched a DVD of one of his recent concerts. So Johnny is still performing, and he now sings several different genres. But here's a video from back in the day of the only song of his that I recognized...only in French...



Hopefully, next time I'll not only have a video from "rock n' roll club," I'll also have a video--or at least some pictures--of tango dancing! Apparently, tomorrow afternoon we're going to a town an hour away to sightsee and dance the tango.

Should be interesting. Stay tuned... :)