Well well well...

Soooooooo, let's see, partay? Yes.

There was already a party going on by the time I got there. The dad was VERY perky and happy and welcoming and funny--true birthday boy, center-of-attention. I learned very quickly that you can't say no at that house (poor Emily) and chose white champagne, although upon later reflection I realized I should've chosen pink to try something different. I just can't handle the bubbles! I managed to drink like half of my tiny little bit and then Emily and I snuck in the kitchen and I dumped the rest because, I repeat, I just can't handle the bubbles! I made very sure to keep my cup full of coke because as Emily pointed out, if your cup is already full they won't offer you another one. The sisters and party-throwers kept wandering around with trays full of appetizer finger foods. I had already eaten dinner (and my 2000+ calories for the day), but how many times do you go to a French party?? A lot of them were like mini versions of croissants with ham and cheese or just little crusty things with a bit of cheese or something inside. Tasty. Salty.

We mostly sat around awkwardly speaking English to each other. It was fun but only because we had each other, otherwise, either one of us would've been a complete wallflower. We mostly just told people over and over that I was Emily's friend and we were Americans from Ohio, when we weren't sitting around. It was really funny when people would try to have conversations with us in English. The most salient one was where one of the guys (I think birthday man's brother?) tried to talk Emily out of getting engaged young--um, too late--and then one of his friends joined in and tried, unsuccessfully, to teach us bad words, because it was so loud and they were more like phrases and we have no idea what they were talking about.

We were going to leave at like 11, because Emily was exhausted and her contacts were bothering her, but that was right when dinner was over and they pulled out a whole tablefull of desserts and then gathered in the dining room to sing, first happy birthday and then a common French song modified (Christmas-morning style) to describe his life and stuff. It was cool. =) When we do it, it's corny (only a little, admit it), but they had this whole room full of people reading the words off and getting into it. Then we decided we should probably have some dessert because it might be hard to escape without answering "yes" to the question "did you get some dessert?" We had tiramisu, which was so-so, and this delicious toffee-chocolate-pie crust thing =D that was kind of like graham crackers. Graham crackers and pretzels, man... *sigh* (I'm going to double check for pretzels soon). Then we were locked into a corner of the dining room and had to make use of our excellent language skills (pardon--excusez-moi--pardon) to get out. Emily's coat had mysteriously been transplanted from the hallway to one of the upstairs beds, but the jolly friend-of-bad-words pointed her in the right direction and we got out into the horrid cold. And back inside toute de suite (asap). Um um Um...

yeah so then we slept asap too, because it was like midnight by that time, and I had weird dreams where either a tiger or a girl who looked like Jasmine was going around attacking people and I was just getting through the part where it was over and we were going around telling our part of the story when I woke up a little bit and thought "this is one of those dreams that would make a decent movie!" ...but by then I was too far out and the details had gotten blurry. I do remember that at one point Katy W died but then by the end of the dream it was more like she had just been horribly traumatized by the experience, so it ended up OKer. And that there was one guy who was like a cross between Chuck (because he was sort of clueless) and Laurie (because he was nice and brotherly).

We got up and went to church--which was so good. Lots and lots of songs, including "knowing you" and the "i love you lord and I lift my voice to worship you" one. Flute, guitar, violin, piano, and djembe. All of the American Christians I know were there and we're thinking of reading the Bible together on Tuesday at lunch (Laura, Emily, Andrea). Met some more people. (Y) <= thumbs up.

After church, I ate with Alex, Sophie, and Claire (Emily was invited but couldn't handle more new people after the party AND church), watched a bit of TV, journaled, finished L'enfant de dimanche, roamed around awkwardly a bit because Anne-So and Steph came, and then some of their friends came to watch the tennis match and I introduced myself as the American of the semester and then escaped to Claire's room to help her with English. I'm not sure how much she enjoyed the process of getting her to the right verb form (she had to translate from French to English--beastly!) and sometimes I wasn't QUITE sure what the French was saying, which caused a bit of problems, but she did like my explanation of when to use since and when to use for which conveniently came back to me from last summer. (You use since when a specific point in time is mentioned and for when it's a length of time. Oh yeah! [Vector style] Betcha never thought about THAT before [unless you're also in TE F/S L in which case you also are an elevated grammatical being]).

Now I'm blogging. Perhaps I shall blog more tonight but perhaps not. I'm not exactly sure but I THINK everyone's back now. The game is still going on (as evidenced by cheers, groans, and many male voices--I think they're happy at the mo) but I hear kitcheny noises too so maybe I can talk to Isabelle.

Subject at lunch: smoking in the US. Here, everyone smokes, Claire says she's about the only one her age who doesn't. Sophie asked me to confirm what someone else had said about it being looked down on if you smoke in the US--like you're a poor person or something. Yeah, basically. Like sure, it's cool in high school maybe, but the general impression is that those who smoke are uneducated. Agreed? It's difficult to be the sole representative of a whole culture!

Darn, the happiness seems to be in the winning of the game (as evidenced by some prolong clapping and whistling and a sudden upswing in the general male voices--meaning they're in the hallway). Now I'll have to wait till they leave to make it to the kitchen. Ah well.

Random aside: Claire is now the proud owner of an awesome bag that started out at 360/370 euro and Isabelle got for 5something in Paris when they didn't have any more here. I feel like that was a PS. Whatevs! Until later!