friday I slept until, oh, I don't know, like 4pm. why did I do this? because I am really really lazy sometimes. I skipped some sort of french culture and civilization thingy. oops. but i hate waking up sometimes, especially by accident. I set my alarm on pm instead of AM. oops.
so i got out of bed and to start the evening off right, i went running. I ran, for those of you who want to look at a map, all the way down the Rhone river to the Parc Tete d'or (head of gold) these things you can see in the pictures below which I stole from google. they are obviously not current seeing as it is winter and there is little green about this time.
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when I got home I found that our christmas party was almost on its way. Margo was here, a chef in training, and she was quite kind to me. I had some eggs, hoping I wasn't being rude, but it was 7pm and I hadn't eaten. I also met two other friends, Coco (a guy with a nickname) is was very kind and nice, he actually brought me about 7 dvds to watch in french because Muya told him how often I do that. I average a movie a day here I think...
And I changed and showed and after a quick rest, it was party time. I wrapped Muya's gifts which were 3 small cooking books from the Virgin super store. the long of the short of it is there were eventually 14 frenchmen/women at our apartment and we were having dish after dish and wine and wine and I understood like 8% of what happened around me. Elodie and Margo were very nice to me, letting me practice my garbled french. laughing along with me and speaking in french and english. i sat next to another french men who i never introduced myself to, but who seemed content to never speak to me. i suppose when you speak like a 4 year old not many people are interested in talking to you, except for nice girls and fun-loving dudes--people who would also enjoy playing with a 4 year old.
either way, it was very fun, filling, and interesting.
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bottom line- most important thing I learned is that when you enter a room, no matter how small the room is, no matter what time in the party, no matter how many people, every person who enters must shake the hand of every man if they are a man and kiss the cheeks of every girl in the room. and I mean EVERY. if you are girl you do only cheek kissing. I suppose girls get away with one advantage, never having to guess the gender of anyone ever, since the kiss regardless, though they also have to kiss the many bearded men that they meet. This ritual inevitably leads to awkward balancing, shuffling and long drawn out entrances, though it ensures that you have a basic introduction to every person. of course in a truly gigantic party, you shake and kiss people only that you are introduced to, previously acquainted with, or friends of. i think this ritual is also one of those things people come to love about this country and miss the most. I know I will miss all the excessive kissing and hand shaking. it's just so damn proper.
(p.s. for those men coming here, you never shake with a glove on your hand, that is rude. you must remove the glove to properly shake the hands of another.)
so the party went well, i put on the music for most of it upon self invitation, i had little else to do, but the comptuer was situated on the other side of the table with a very narrow space to pass behind people to reach it, so every time a changed the music it became a game of weighing whether i was more embarrassed by the poor choice of music or by getting up and shuffling behind everyone and then returning to my place silently and to silence...
it was a christmas party so I played Vince Guraldi Christmas CD, big mistake. when a choir song came on the world was not happy.
i stuck thereafter to brazilian, jazz and the police.
every time i volunteer to DJ in my life I quickly remember why I seldom do so, that being that my musical taste are, although highly developed, certainly not in line with common interests... i guess geniuses are always lonely...
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Saturday
I woke up at 7:30 after sleeping for like 4 hours to meet Raouf for a soccer tournament. un tornoi. he picked me and Heddy up in the car and we drove down to what was a small town. There is a limited amount of suburbs here and mostly country and city, much like all of europe. basically, outside of 20 miles from the city center we were in farmland. this is definitely not the case in Atlanta...
are team was basically the Regular guys. It was a free Futsala tournament for teams of 5 indoors. it is not like indoor soccer because the ball is like normal ball but heavier. There are out of bounds, but no throw ins, just kick ins. The goals are smaller, and there are only 5 people. We played Raouf, Heddy, me, Nicolas, and two frenchmen who I never actually met. I was very tired but I enjoyed talking to Heddy and Nicolas quite a bit. Apparently I managed a pretty good impression though I felt like quite the asshole being so quite. I guess my standards are very high.
There were 3 matches for each team. the others all had fancy labeled shirts and "strategies". Our shirts were labeled with a number in back, but otherwise were plain white. I would not say I played terribly, but I didn't play amazing. I think doing okay for that group (all soccer hoodlums and people who play a lot) was fine with me. The futsala atmosphere was strange, and my team was all new acquaintances. It was also very intimidating of course. I pulled a few nice cuts and stepthroughs around some players, but I never got a chance to shoot. The ball is much heavier so you have to hit it harder all the time. I think it is meant to slow down in the hair as not to kill anyone because it is so hard still. By the end of our first 12 minute match my lungs were burning and I coughed a lot. THe brisk cold winter air was leaking into the old gym. we lost 5-0 4-0 and 3-0. So we improved. If anyone has seen dodge ball, we were the protagonist's team...
I did take a few shots on goal and found if I wasn't intimidating by the young soccer Bruce Lees, the brazilian all stars, the earringed and chained hoodlums, and the thick necked rugby looking dudes, i could shoot pretty well. Still i didn't know what people were yelling so it was quite confusing when people talked to me. A smile and a nod will get you through a lot of conversations I've learned....
We were there until about 3pm and all quite ashamed though still quite positive. Raouf dropped Heddy off by his house in the small town and drove me back home. Meanwhile I learned quite a bit of French. That morning, Raouf actually told me he was impressed with my French!
Apparently the traffic jams... embouteillages... are pretty odd sights downtown by the school, but we found one!
I got home and napped and made some phone calls.
i woke up and there was a party for the international english speakers at some apartment. Luckily I had started a facebook group for the students at my program and 15 had joined, including one young Alexander of australia who was hosting the party. He had posted his address, though not his telephone number. I walked to the place, and found where 88 rue de villon should have a been and stood dumb founded looking at 80 and the 90 repeatedly and a big blank building inbetween, not knowing which of the 5 possible adresses inbetween in represented. I knew that they were supposed to go down town to bars by 9 so I decided to wait until at least 9:15 to catch someone exiting or entering who knew what was happening. I had walked for 20 minutes to get there so I wasn't going to give up easily.
To not my surprise I head three girls speaking the English language finally and upon announcing the program name "SELF" was recognized no longer as a creeper standing on the street corner but a welcomed colleague. They had the same problem and another one, they had the number but no phone credit. I provided the phone credit, they the number, and voila! We had a call to Alex himself and and entrance to the party.
The party was a single small dorm room crammed with about 30 people and 25 nations. i stole the only chair available and proceeded to enjoy myself. I spoke first with my accomplices Yurena, and Tatiana of German/Russian descent, mostly about how the slash got into that description. Apparently the German heritage is very respected even to 200 years back.
I also spoke with several others, Jet of Dallas and Laury (a guy) of FInland, Genisha of Sri Lanka and many others from a mixed background. I enjoyed speaking with Susanna of Slovakia who had bad english but superior French. We spoke in our relative weak tounges and laughed at our failures. Eventually we left the room for the outside world and every street corner we turned we became more seperated. By the time we were at the boats I had met several spanish speakers and we had lost about 60% of the group. I rode the metro finally but I still haven't not paid. Everyone was rushing in and my spaniard friend offered to let me pass in just behind her so I could keep up. I didn't see her after the train either. But i did speak a lot of confused spanish french. I've had trouble keeping in mind the differences between CON and AVEC which are with in the two, and others things like mas and plus which both me more in those languages. The complex words don't escape me. My tongue also jumps from english to french to spanish interpretations of words. it is very hard.
The boats on the river are actually mostly Clubs and Bars and we entered one called Siruis. We went downstairs and danced until I got really bored of it and wanted to call jessica. luckily home is very close and walked briskly in the cold.
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Sunday
today I woke up late, made so phone calls, and had to head out to my French practice group organized by Raouf. It is comprised of Taiwanese Elyse, Raouf, Luca of Slovakia and another young lady who was there with Luca. We just talked about some verbs and talked in French. My head was quite out of it, I had a slight hangover and was tired. But i managed alright.
Then Elyse, Raouf, and I headed to Mcdonalds, which is an acceptable hang out spot here. It is much nicer than the others of course and the employees are young students. It is kind of hip and it tastes pretty good. THe menu is very different but so far I've only experienced the 1 Euro cheeseburger.
Then I walked home and commenced to sit on my computer until now. I am beat from the weekend and I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in french and swtiched to english when I got interested.
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So i have practiced a lot of french. I have what one seems to say, their foot in the door. It is honestly thanks to AIESEC here and my venture to the first meeting last monday. I am pleased with my decision to pursue contacting them and happy to have met someone as kind as Raouf. We will see what other people I am able to befriend..
as of now I am in many future talks with myself and jessica and majors and graduation and whatever. not fun. and the question of money and everything. very hard. though lucky webcams allow me to feel sometimes not so far.
saji has returned to london and rachel to spain so the others in my situation are here and maybe jessica and I will feel like we are not alone in this again.
i'm hungry and wish I had a baguette. tomorrow we have three hours of class and I need to pursue choosing more courses and deciding my graduation time line and whatnot. a lot to think about.
peace, i have more pictures coming.
lesson for the day. we are all united by the human condition and people aren't that different. love isn't rare but maybe a good relationship is. it's hard to always be strong and right, and impossible to not be scared but it is our hope and will power that separates us.
Your wisdom inspires ;)
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