January 23, 2005

1:41pm

Well, the Bal Folk last night was an absolute riot. I took a couple of short videos with my camera. There were a lot of people there—and not just all really old ones. The musicians were a lot better this time, too. I think we must have been there over three hours—I didn’t get to bed last night until after 2am. I was absolutely dripping sweat when we left.

But, the whole evening. At about 5pm I went down to the kitchen to get a bite to eat (I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to eat later on). Dagmar was there, so we had a nice conversation about philosophy and movies (in French, of course. Wow, I am discussing philosophy in French! How awesome is that?)

Then, at 6pm, I ran over to the bakery and met Jo, Christine’s daughter, and her boyfriend. They drove Jo and me to Christine’s house (Christine is a secretary at Camille Verne. She and Jo trade English conversation for French conversation. She is the one who invited us to the Bal Folk.) Anyway, we got there, Christine’s daughter and her boyfriend disappeared, and Christine’s husband, Jean-something, tried to teach Jo and me some dance steps. We then had crepes—both savory and sweet—and drank two bottles of cidre (cidre is a Bretagne thing—it goes with the crepes). Oh, and I forgot to mention—Christine’s daughter’s friend, Michael, came over too. He looked a lot like Mathieu from Star Academy.

So, then we all went to the dance. Yea! It was fun, it really was. I can’t wait to get back to MD and show people the videos. But even they don’t capture the full extent of what it was like.

Anyway, last Wednesday I had a conversation class at the IUFM and I was talking about how the Brits and I loved Star Academy so much because we considered it to be “so French.” The girls I was talking to were kind of offended and said that they thought it came from America. I was like, no way, we have nothing like that in the states. And the girls were like, well, it is not French—they have the same thing in Spain, so it must be Spanish. I was completely amused by the whole exchange.

Oh, and my mouth has continued to get me in trouble. You would think that I if I go to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language really well, I could avoid getting myself into trouble. Not a chance. Anyway, the Friday before last, I was in an English class with the first year English teacher at the IUFM (Joanne). Somehow to conversation turned to born-again Christians (how we managed that, I have no clue). Anyway, none of the students knew what a born-again Christian was, so Joanne asked me for a definition. I was like, “a nutcase.” Of course, the instant I said that, my Brain told me that, based on certain contextual clues, Joanne was a BAC. And my little brain was absolutely right. In my defense, I felt really, really bad about what I said for a complete week. Then I started to see the humor in it. Anyway, the French view of a BAC is really great. They wanted to know how many times a person can be born-again. Very practical question, I think. I mean, if each time you are born-again you get to wipe the slate clean, why not do it every two or three years?

So, yeah, I’m probably going to hell when I die. At least I will be in good company.