Using sports as a pretense to go to awesome places

One of my better ideas.

But before I get into that, I want to take a brief moment to return to the original intention of this blog and talk about food. I started feeling pretty creepy taking a camera into the kitchen every night when they called me in for dinner, but I promise I'm still being fed. I wish I could sum my dinners up neatly, but the meals are far too random to do so. The themes range from Asian to Algerian to Spanish to American (read: piece of hamburger meat and fries with a possible side of pizza) to regional dishes. It's always very very good, and they continue to think a reasonable portion for me is the equivalent to a reasonable portion for my host dad (not complaining at all because that's like, you know, not totally untrue). For lunch I'm always on my own, and I've become a regular at a soup place where you choose your vegetables, put them in a bag, and then ask for it to be pureed or.. souped? I generally go for the soup option. These guys have gotten so used to seeing me and Stephanie that they gave Steph a bunch of free dessert coupons.

Shout out to Katie's ridiculous pastry in the background

This weekend me and the three guys on the program went to the gorgeous port city that is Marseille. We used covoiturage to get there and back (which I'm pretty sure they have in America and is a great way to get around) and stayed in a hostel. Due to complete dumb luck, they messed up our reservation so we ended up paying for a normal, four person room and ended up in the hostel equivalent of a penthouse.

Never found out where the random castle door in the back led to

Anyway, we felt pretty ritzy. Before settling in to the hostel, we got some really good Japanese food. When we arrived at the restaurant,  the woman said that she only had three dishes left. None of us are picky, so we sat down. Turns out, she literally only had enough food for three more dishes, but she also had an endless amount of Japanese omelettes. Naturally, we just agreed to eat it all. We ended up with a bento box, some curried soup, a ball of rice, and three omelettes that were sprinkled with some rather disconcerting flakes of what seemed to be some type of living, breathing organism. We honestly just stared at it in awe for a period of time because it was so confusing.

Sean and the magic omelette (<--new idea for children's book)

That evening, we went to a football match. I was more into it than I expected to be, probably due to the fact that the french are VERY passionate/aggressive about their soccer teams. Example: Marseille ended up winning, and at the end they chanted vehemently "PARIS PARIS ON T'ENCUL", which I don't want to translate here due to the audience of this blog, but if you're curious just put it into google translate. Basically, it wouldn't fly in America. Moreover, they were playing Yves st Laurent, (EDIT: the team name is actually Lorient. Couldn't have proven my not-knowing-anything-about-sports point more effectively) which is not Paris at all, so I found that kind of hilarious.

Looking rather unnatural in sporting attire

After the game, we went to a fantastic dinner at a place that the Canadian guy at the front desk of the hostel suggested. We got a whole array of seafood, french fries, pizza, etc.

Of course, because Sterling is Sterling, he had to get the seafood boat

That night we hung out in our room and went out to a couple clubs, which was absolutely hilarious for almost every reason.

On Sunday we did some sightseeing, which consisted of walking up the steepest hills I've ever known and seeing some truly incredible views/old things. We visited a fort first and then Notre Dame de la Gare (a gorgeous cathedral that is more or less placed on top of a mountain). We also just hung out at the port and took advantage of the awesome weather. In short, bro weekend surpassed my already very high expectations.

When I returned home last night, a student from UNC who stayed with my host family a year ago and now lives in France came to visit with her partner. It was interesting, because her partner didn't speak french at all and my host dad doesn't speak much English, so I was switching back and forth throughout the night. Also, after 30 minutes of trying to figure out why this girl looked so unbelievably familiar, we realized that we took a class together last year, so that was pretty cool too.

This coming weekend we go off on our two week spring break, so hopefully I'll be able to fit another update in before then. Oh, and since I finally took pictures, here are some of Marseille:

View from the train station

Notre Dame de la Gare

During the longest walk uphill ever I've ever agreed to

View of Marseille. And Sterling.

The true meaning of stress

Apologies for the super melodramatic title/post that is to follow.

Before filling you in on last week, I feel like it's important to touch on some events that I skipped over and want to be able to remember fondly when reminiscing over this blog 3 years from now.

Crepe day: Well, there's really not much to say here. We all got together and brought wine or some sort of crepe topping, so there was really no way it could not be the best night ever.

To clarify: stuff that look like vomit is not actually vomit
but delicious crushed up bueno bars

The Super Bowl: The party at Sean's house was a massive success. Highlights include:
1. Getting destroyed in beer pong by Sean's 17 year old host brother who had never even heard of the game before that night.
2. Not watching a second of football.
3. Waking up the next morning to the distraught stare of a Japanese exchange student who couldn't figure out why there were three Americans in her bed.

Now, on to this past week, which will forever be known as the week that I discovered the true meaning of stress. I knew that last week was going to be rough, given that I had two papers, two exams, a bunch of busy work, and an oral presentation. Since it is indeed my MO to get work done stupidly in advance, I decided to write one of the papers the weekend before stress week to try and lighten the load. This was the day of the Olympic open ceremonies, so I ended up writing part of it in a bar. Fast forward to the day before the paper is due: I open Word with the intention of doing some final edits, only to discover that the essay is no where to be found. I kind of just stared at the wall for five minutes, and then frantically used every tool in my limited technology arsenal to try and recover/find this paper. After an hour or so of searching, it became clear that it was a lost cause. This will forever be the greatest mystery of my life, but I guess it's what I get for writing a paper in a bar.

After adding all of this work to trying to sort out spring break plans and our director telling us that we were half way finished with the program, I was on the brink of a full-out existential crisis. Of course, everything worked out completely fine as things generally do. Really, this week put the idea of stress in perspective for me, and I expect that from now on I will be a much calmer person.

After my brain nearly exploding, the weekend was a much needed break. On Saturday some of us went out with a large group of Erasmus students, who pretty much all had an exotic nationality and spoke very good french. We introduced them to the games kings and up and down the river, and it was a solid bonding experience for all. Also, my biggest miscommunication thus far happened with an Italian student while discussing the difference between European and American guys, and that was pretty hilarious. 

The conversation:
Him: Les garçons américains sont plus timides, ouais?
Me: Ouais, en général.
Him: Donc, tu ne embrasses jamais tes amis?
Me: Ah non, je les embrasse tous les temps, ça c'est normal. 
Him: Ah, vraiment? Et je suis ton ami, non?
Me: Uh, ouais, je suppose. 

That I though was said:
Him: American guys are more reserved, right?
Me: In general, yeah.
Him: So you don't ever hug your guy friends?
Me: Oh, no I hug my guys friends all the time. That's pretty normal. 
Him: Oh really? And I'm your friend now, right?
Me: Yeah, I guess. 

What was actually said:
Him: American guys are more reserved, right?
Me: In general, yeah.
Him: **in retrospect with a joking tone** So you don't ever make out with your guy friends?
Me: Oh, no I make out with my guys friends. That's pretty normal.
Him: **in retrospect with a surprised tone** Oh really? And I'm your friend now, right?
Me: Yeah, I guess.

And that is the romantic story of my first kiss with a European man.

This week will certainly be more easygoing and I think we're doing some traveling this weekend. I'll be sure to try and start taking pictures again.

A pictureless post

It seems like I have been posting almost entirely about events and things you can take pictures of, so I want to take this short time I have before dinner to reflect and talk about feelings and.. stuff.

When I first got here, I was not terribly comfortable around my host family. This didn't bother me at all, because I didn't think it was possible for any other way to exist. I didn't expect to ever be completely at ease here, be it because of the language barrier/cultural differences/the fact that I'm more or less subletting a room in their house/what have you. This isn't to say that I wasn't fond of my host family, I just saw it more as a landlord/tenant type of relationship above all else. Due to these preconceived notions, I acted like a tenant and was SUPER polite. Overly polite. Like super, overly, uncomfortably polite. I'm pretty sure I once asked permission to get a cup of water. Really, I was too self-aware, which led to a lot of overly (this word just happens to apply a lot in this situation) enthusiastic laughing and rather creepy half-smiles. If you've ever seen my half-smile, you can imagine the weird vibes that I was accidentally sending their way.

So, obviously this is all leading to me admitting that I was very wrong about the situation. Over the past few weeks I've started to genuinely feel like a part of this family, which is really, really nice to say the least. I even almost forgot to close the bathroom door today (a problem I have that is especially problematic here given that the bathroom is directly in the middle of the house).

I think this is a sign that my communication skills are improving. Being unable to express yourself is extremely frustrating, and since being here I have realized two important things about my personality: 1. In English, I express myself almost entirely in idioms and made-up words and 2. The way I form sentences and speak in general in English is very vague, roundabout, drawn-out, and just kind of weird. Thus, trying to make my personality translate was a rather slow process. Sentences I've tried to express to my host family like: I will surely kill things if the tram doesn't hurry it's worthless caterpillar-looking-like ass up. It moves slower than the speed of raining crazy glue, or: I can't bring myself to care more than zero percent on this day, just don't really translate.

Although I'm still not capable of expressing 100% of what I want to say 100% of the time, it's certainly becoming easier. I imagine once I reach a certain conversational level I'll be able to desecrate the french language as much as I have managed to English.

Anyway, this is all to say that everything is going really well. There is no better feeling on earth than when you notice you have improved in something that previously frustrated you to no end. As for things I've been doing, I'll write up another post on that later (in theory). One thing I will include is that we sang karaoke last night and it was awesomely hysterical/entertaining. Bree and I sung Wonderwall with two french guys, and if that's not hilarious enough just based on the fact that it's the song Wonderwall, just imagine the pronunciation of "wonderwall" in a french accent. Too good.

National crepe day > [insert inferior national holiday here]

This week I finally noticed some real improvement in my communicative/comprehension skills. This is mostly due to the fact that I can now distinguish between when my host family is messing with me and when they're being serious. This was an important development, because it turns out the former applies about 94% of the time.

Example: Jean F was kind enough to offer to drive me to the town center one night because we finished dinner pretty late. I walked to what I thought was his car and tried to communicate to him that the door was locked and I couldn't get in. He proceeded to watch me attempt to break into this car/find the word for unlock for 5 minutes until walking to the car next to it and opening the door for me. Luckily, I don't consider a relationship to be real until it reaches the point where mutual mocking is acceptable, so I'm pretty ecstatic.

This week I also found my (potentially) favorite bar. It's called Rebuffy, and it has earned a special place in my heart primarily because it: 1. sells large carafes of wine for very cheap 2. sells vin chaud for very cheap 3. has an assorted nut dispenser 4. has a giant pile of classic boardgames.

We played using only our refined and vast French vocabulary. Notice that at this point we had
 words pertaining to food, cheese, and English words that also happen to be french words. 

We also played a game of clue, which is now officially my favorite board game ever. I think elementary school me would be proud of my new found ability to play board games without flipping the table or running away in tears.

Yesterday we went to the Musée Fabre and looked at some 17th century Dutch paintings and an exhibit by Pierre Soulage. It was pretty interesting, and the museum has an awesome collection in general, so I intend to return at some point. We had a nice picnic in the park later on that day and a very fun night out. I realized that I love French clubs so much because they play a bunch of out-of-date American music that a lot of people find lame but I secretly find awesome.

Tonight we're having a crepe party because apparently it's a national crepe holiday today. I thought this was a brilliant excuse my friends made up so that we could consume a frightening number of crepes with minimal shame, but when I went into the kitchen this morning, my host brother was sure enough frying up a crepe. There's a high probability that we will also be eating them after dinner in my household. I've already decided that no matter how many crepes I consume today, I will only own up to 3.

Tomorrow night an American friend is hosting a Superbowl party. Either his host family misunderstood his intent or are just really cool, because the Superbowl doesn't start here until 12:30 am and consequently won't end until.. what.. 3:00 am? I assume (hope) football games don't last much longer than that. Apparently our friend also explained the concept of beer pong to his family and they were totally into the idea. In short, there is no way tomorrow night will not be super interesting (mostly for non-football related reasons).

Hope everyone is having a good weekend! I will leave you with this kind of crappy/kind of pleasant picture of a sunset:

Art