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 I realized that I love French clubs so much because they play a bunch of out-of-date American music that a lot of people find lame but I secretly find awesome.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