Oh, hello French boy in my house!
Well it is now Sunday and I have been in France for one week. It’s amazing it seems like much much longer. So I’m finally settling in, some what, to French life. Everyday I get up, maybe go for a run along the canal and in the gardens, go to the Dickinson Center for classes, and go to lunch with friends. It’s a nice schedule! Oh yeah, speaking bad French is a major part of every day too. But whatever, I’m over it. Fluency will come with time, so I’m just going to keep practicing!
So Friday night was the start of our first real weekend in Toulouse (last weekend everyone was too stressed and jet lagged to do anything, obviously). So we met at Place du Capitole and ended up having a fun night, bar hopping and clubbing (We ended up at Club Shanghai—that’s for you Jason!) We met some other Americans who are studying abroad too, so that was fun. It’s weird, we’ve only been here for a week, but we’re craving for American things already! Well, American interaction I guess. It’s very easy to get “Frenched out”, as I like to call it. I know speaking in English all the time isn’t going to help my French, and I suppose sometimes I’ll have to make an agreement to only speak French with my American friends, but not now. Hahaha.
Then on Saturday we tried to go to this festival in one of the suburbs of Toulouse that Gersande (assistant at the Dickinson Center) told us about. Well, she failed to mention it is a nighttime festival! So we get there around 2, and it’s like dead. There are some tents and food places, but everyone is giving us crazy looks and some people we wearing bizarre clothes. So Annie, Christine, and I felt incredibly out of place and like we were crashing some private party. Soooo we promptly returned to the bus and went back to Toulouse and ate at our favorite cheap sandwich shop and then walked around for a while. I don’t know how we passed the afternoon, but all of a sudden it was 5:30. We came back to my house for a while, then went back to Place du Capitole to try and hook up with some other people for the night and get something to eat. Unfortunately, it did what it has done every day since we arrived: rain. Poured, actually. So Annie and I hurried into a little café and sat under the umbrellas and watched the rain while we ate quiche and hot chocolate. It was very romantic….too bad it was with Annie! So I decided to make it an early night and I came back around 11:30 and was somewhat surprised to find a boy sitting on our couch! Apparently, I should learn how to understand French because I knew that my host parents were going out for dinner (which entails leaving at like, 9:00, so they were still here when I left). And Valérie told me something about the son of one of their friends who baby-sits for Alix and Manon on a regular basis. But I did not put two and two together, and was like “oh, hello strange French teenager on my couch!” But he ended up being very nice, and I don’t know how old he is, about my age, I think. He wanted to ask me all these questions about American culture, and politics and I was kind of bored. But whatever. And he also wanted to speak English to practice, and I was not pleased to find that he was absolutely fluent in English. Maybe he just heard my really bad French and was like “I cannot listen to this girl for the next hour!” So Valérie now thinks that we should be in love and go out all the time, which I can’t say I’m opposed too because it would be fun to have a real French friend! Wheeeeee.
Okay, every place ever is closed on Sundays here, so I don’t know what I’m going to do for lunch, but I’ll figure something out. A bientot!
So Friday night was the start of our first real weekend in Toulouse (last weekend everyone was too stressed and jet lagged to do anything, obviously). So we met at Place du Capitole and ended up having a fun night, bar hopping and clubbing (We ended up at Club Shanghai—that’s for you Jason!) We met some other Americans who are studying abroad too, so that was fun. It’s weird, we’ve only been here for a week, but we’re craving for American things already! Well, American interaction I guess. It’s very easy to get “Frenched out”, as I like to call it. I know speaking in English all the time isn’t going to help my French, and I suppose sometimes I’ll have to make an agreement to only speak French with my American friends, but not now. Hahaha.
Then on Saturday we tried to go to this festival in one of the suburbs of Toulouse that Gersande (assistant at the Dickinson Center) told us about. Well, she failed to mention it is a nighttime festival! So we get there around 2, and it’s like dead. There are some tents and food places, but everyone is giving us crazy looks and some people we wearing bizarre clothes. So Annie, Christine, and I felt incredibly out of place and like we were crashing some private party. Soooo we promptly returned to the bus and went back to Toulouse and ate at our favorite cheap sandwich shop and then walked around for a while. I don’t know how we passed the afternoon, but all of a sudden it was 5:30. We came back to my house for a while, then went back to Place du Capitole to try and hook up with some other people for the night and get something to eat. Unfortunately, it did what it has done every day since we arrived: rain. Poured, actually. So Annie and I hurried into a little café and sat under the umbrellas and watched the rain while we ate quiche and hot chocolate. It was very romantic….too bad it was with Annie! So I decided to make it an early night and I came back around 11:30 and was somewhat surprised to find a boy sitting on our couch! Apparently, I should learn how to understand French because I knew that my host parents were going out for dinner (which entails leaving at like, 9:00, so they were still here when I left). And Valérie told me something about the son of one of their friends who baby-sits for Alix and Manon on a regular basis. But I did not put two and two together, and was like “oh, hello strange French teenager on my couch!” But he ended up being very nice, and I don’t know how old he is, about my age, I think. He wanted to ask me all these questions about American culture, and politics and I was kind of bored. But whatever. And he also wanted to speak English to practice, and I was not pleased to find that he was absolutely fluent in English. Maybe he just heard my really bad French and was like “I cannot listen to this girl for the next hour!” So Valérie now thinks that we should be in love and go out all the time, which I can’t say I’m opposed too because it would be fun to have a real French friend! Wheeeeee.
Okay, every place ever is closed on Sundays here, so I don’t know what I’m going to do for lunch, but I’ll figure something out. A bientot!
posted by Caitlin @ 1:15 PM
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