quel desordre

I had a lovely weekend from which I have yet to recover. My eyes want to shut and I have class in the morning, but my sense of duty won’t let me rest until I’ve written at least a brief blog entry (I’m using brief in the loose sense of the term…I’m a loquacious lady.)

Highlights from the past few days:

Friday I had my (I believe) final fiasco with the French university system. Apparently when the administration decides to change the day or time of a course, a sufficient means of communicating that change is to post a small piece of paper in the corner of a bulletin board at the end of a long hallway on the 4^th floor of one of the buildings on campus, a building which is not, in fact, anywhere near where the class takes place. The consequence of this apotheosis of efficiency was that I missed my class. But (thank GOD!) I didn’t miss my travaux dirigé (T.D.), the weekly tutorial for the class, during which I listened to a sweaty middle-aged man explain, for three hours, how to read a poem.

Saturday night was the big England vs. France rugby game. To kill the suspense right off, let me just tell you that France lost. It was actually a pretty depressing game—we (we???) were winning until the last 8 minutes. I watched the game with Theo and about 12 of his guy friends from high school, the same group I went to a house party with a few weeks ago. After the game, there was disagreement about where to go next (my friends wanted me to meet them at St. Michel, Theo and his friends didn’t want to go that far away—we were in Vincennes at the time, a suburb just southeast of the city). I ultimately convinced 5 of them to come with me to St. Michel, the incentive being the declaration that “il y aura beaucoup des americaines!” (there will be many American girls).

It was a fabulous night. We all convened at the jam-packed hub of the city’s nightlife, the network of tiny bars, pedestrian streets and drunken students that is St. Michel. After much persuading and screaming directions on my part, the final crew ended up being pretty large and diverse—Theo and his friends, a handful of girls from IES, Olivier—my dread-locked conversation hour homie—and a few random French guys Olivier brought along. It made me happy to witness the successful mingling of some of the different groups of people I’ve met.

The group tapered off one by one, and the night concluded with me, two girls from IES, Theo, and two of Theo’s friends wandering around the streets at 4 in the morning, happily searching for any bar that wasn’t trying to close, realizing that all the metro had long-since stopped running, and listening to Louis and Guillaume rap (I believe I mentioned previously the French Wu-Tang equivalent and the French Bob Dylan aficionado—they are, respectively, Guillaume and Louis). They both call me Kat because Kate is too hard to pronounce. It was wonderful.

Theo was very drunk, which means that he insisted on trying to speak English. Despite a year in Montreal, ten years of hosting American students in his apartment, and three road trips across the states, his English is pretty horrible—but it’s endearing to watch him try, to see the pained look of concentration as he searches fruitlessly for a word, eventually giving up and just saying it in French. In his drunken state, he told me that I was the second best French speaking student they have had (number one was also from Boston, incidentally). He also explained to me, very seriously, and without an ounce of derision, that the Big Mac is the United States’ Mona Lisa—that is, the masterpiece that we have contributed to the culture of the world. I can’t remember all of his reasoning, but it made sense at the time.

I think my plan to become a regular at Café Titon is working. The guys who work there know me now, and say “Hello” when I come in because they know I speak English. Last time, one of them came over and sat with me for a while—when I told him I was from Boston, he asked me if I’d read that article in the Boston Globe that mentioned the café—apparently they all became really friendly with the guy who wrote the article. They know my name now, too. I could be well on my way to getting a “Hello, Kate!” when I walk in.

Today on the metro, a disheveled looking fifty-something man in a dirty t-shirt wandered on, disoriented, his glasses askew. He carried a large square box filled with dirt, with two dismal geraniums poking out, and a massive tome entitled “Ma grossesse, mon enfant” (my pregnancy, my baby). Just an interesting image to leave you with.

P.S. Thanks for the grammar correction, mom. How embarrassing.