late night dinner

So we went to an ex-pat dinner last night for Zach's work-- which sounds a lot bigger of a deal than it really was. One of Zach's bosses from California is out here for business and he wanted to take the other Americans from the company who're working here out to dinner, all 6 of us (ok, it was 6 including the 2 wives, me and Aruna). Anyway... so we go to this restaurant and our dinner reservations are at 8:30pm, which basically means it's going to be a late night. We were the first to arrive so we went to the bar/lounge downstairs to wait for the others. The bar was called The Leopard Bar and was attempting a very strange mix of high-class with leopard print jungle themes. I'm not quite sure how you express "cheesy" in French, but this certainly was it. Of course, then the lounge singers came out and started singing easy listening classics from the early 90's, and it was all almost a little too much. lol

Anyway, everyone arrived and I think we got to our table around 9pm and proceeded to have a very fancy dinner. Between our courses they kept bringing out different little "amuse-bouches" for us to try. The food was good, though some things worked better than others. My main dish was this bacon/brisket type dish (a cube of bacon oven-baked like bisket) that was incredibly tasty, but you can only have so much of fat with strips of meat inbetween.

We finished dinner at 12:45am, which unfortunately meant we'd missed the last buses out... but Bob and Aruna were kind enough to give us a ride home. I enjoyed the meal, but by the time I was getting into bed all the rich and different tastes were starting to get to me and my tummy was feeling a little bit strange. But again, it was fun. It was a good group.

However we probably didn't get home and into bed till close to 2am, which made it extremely unlikely that I would be making it to French class this morning... Instead I slept in a bit, took Zach to work and then headed over to a big shopping center nearby to get some cat food and litter, and explore the shops a bit (gotta do some research for when visitors come!!). I unfortunately also fell for the trap of buying a couple American magazines, which cost a friggin fortune at the magazine stand. I should just invest in subscriptions, in the long run it'll probably be less.

Anyway, this afternoon I may nap a bit more and then at 5 I've got a date with little Jules again-- Aruna's got French class, and Bob will be at a business dinner (as will Zach) to I'll be spending the evening baby-sitting. Aruna tells me I got RAVE reviews from Jules after I sat for her last time, so tonight should be fun. =P

Oh, and these gorgeous yellow flowers are blooming in our terrace. =) I've never seen them with the small orange petals inbetween the yellow ones before. There's plenty more getting ready to bloom. So pretty!