Le temps volant passe vitement

5/3

This week we turned into March, next weekend all the boyfriends are coming, the weekend après ça Brooke, Catherine and Alyssa and coming to visit, après ça MOM & DAD GET HERE, apres ca Recca Bector comes to France, and après ÇA, there are only a few weeks before I leave this beautiful place. Wow, time flies! This week has had me in a funk what with Granny being so ill… I’ve been feeling very far away and I don’t like that I can’t just hop a plane home if I need to. There have been a couple nights of restless sleep and feelings of helplessness but I keep reminding myself “Que sera, sera.” Whatever will be, will be.
I also am reminded how lucky I am to be surrounded with such amazing friends over here. I seriously have the best roommate anyone could ask for and I know that Allison and I will be close friends for a very long time. :) She’s been so sweet and supportive this week even when I’ve been holed up in the bathroom through the night talking to the fam on skype. Mind you, the walls are very thin... Our professor, Mr. Tissot even noticed I was looking tired and sad and lent some consoling words. The French are très francs (frank) when it comes to the stages of life and it was an interesting and surprisingly helpful perspective to hear.

Aside from Gran’s troubles, this week has been another thriller! :) We had our first real test so I had to exercise my brain and re-teach myself how to study of my own accord for more than 30 minutes. Lol. (Not that we don’t work, it’s just that most of it is done in class since they are each 4 hours long!) The exam was for translation class and we thought it was going to be over the excerpts we’d already done together so all of us were diligently trying to memorize all the idioms and figures of speech in those. We were successful in that, but when she passed out the exam it ended being from the same text but from a totally different passage. Oh dear. Needless to say, that was interesting! I was surprised though at how much of the meaning I was able to convey. It really showed me how much I’m learning and how much my language has already improved. I still have a long way to go before calling myself fluent, but I’m getting closer to being able to read a text once through and understand it’s meaning as I go… Not once I’ve gone back and looked up the definition of every word. Yay!

On the way back from class today I stopped for some pizza and I wanted to know if they had any with olives. I was able to formulate phrases in real time and had a legit back and forth little convo without missing a beat! SUCCESS! Usually when I try to go to those places they can tell I’m American and either give me the don’t-try-to-speak-French-because-you’re-going-to-butcher-it look whenever I try, or just point and grunt to avoid having to lower themselves to my level. Today however, I definitely got a look but I think (I hope!) that it was an I-know-you’re-foreign-because-of-your-accent-but-you’re-speaking-really-well-so-I’ll-speak-French-back-to-you kind of look! Awesome. :)

Last night Allison and I decided to have Diner Chez Nous: Take 2 and had an absolute blast! We thought it would be fun to make nutella banane crepes for dessert (très français!) so the theme was B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Banana) Bahaha! :) Sometime last week I’d been experimenting with cream sauces and managed a reeeeaaly nice vegetable cream soup so I did my best to recreate it on a large scale for the main course. We had about 16 friends over, Lydia brought a salad, the soup was totally delicious, Clifton brought a homemade Tart au Citron and Tory some flan, we had beaucoup de vin (rouge, blanche, rosé, brillants…), went through ~8-10 baguettes, and had a veritable crêpe flipping party!!! Haha :) I was in the kitchen the whole first half making the soup, but once we’d had the first two courses of dessert everyone jumped into the kitchen and started flippin' em’ like pros! So much fun! I really love having people over, it’s more fun for me than going out even I think. I just really enjoy having friends over, sharing a meal, talking, having some wine, and just enjoying everybody in a super low-key fashion. Seriously, this was such a FUN night :) After everyone cleared out I snapped a little and cleaned and vacuumed the entire apartment (I tend to fixate on things when my subconscious is stressing) and then we met up with some of the friends at O’Shannons. After that we went to Scat club with the Norwegian Contingent (Katja and Maria!) for some dancing and a live band. I needed to dance it out and at one point Allison pulled the slickest I-don’t-want-to-dance-with-you move I’ve ever witnessed! The guy gave a pouty face as they always do, but he couldn’t even complain because it was THAT smooth. Well played my friend! Haha :) We called it a night around 2AM before our 8AM class, but it was definitely worth the epic adventure! Whew!



Again, I’m not sure who reads these, but Dad is always telling me that my “public” is waiting… I’ll try to do little updates more often and I’ll get Rome&Florence posted at some point. That one’s going to take a while so you’ll just have to wait until I can finish it! Right then, over and out :)

Bisous
~B