(Left to right: Cody, Angela, Carolyn and me at the beach in Ile-aux-Moines.)When I was in Nepal, it was always blatantly obvious that you were a foreigner. Whether or not you could speak Hindi didn't matter, because by being almost 6 ft. tall and white made you stick out like a sore thumb. There was never any pretending to be Nepali, because you couldn't.
In that respect, living and interacting in France is almost more difficult. The students that I'm with (myself included) are in this strange conundrum of blending in with the outside world, and wanting to blend in, but at the same time, being almost certain that you can't. You forget that you can understand and speak French. But you can.
Last night, my friends and I went to a hookah bar, and then out to dinner (where I ordered a bloody steak--like, blood was actually gushing out) and then to a carnival. Let me just tell you, the French do not joke around with their rides. The rides go on for a good 10-15 mintues, and are 3x more terrifying than any ride in the US. I spent most of the ride worrying about whether or not my harness was double-backed.
Afterwards, we walked to an area of town called Bouffay, where we bought two bottles of wine (which together? was cheaper than the small bottle of sunscreen I had bought earlier.) Bouffay was bumpin' and we spent most of the night in nice cafe called,' Le Petit Coin,' named after a toilet. About midnight, when we were all slightly worried about how we were going to get home, we headed out. As I live fairly close to town, I headed up the cobblestones to walk through the plazas and home.
On the way home, I passed a window, out of which someone was blasting, 'Lady Marmalade,' by Pink, Christina Aquilera and others. I also passed three teenage boys puking in a corner.
It was a good night.
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