Happy in France

Le sigh......but le good sigh:) I want to start off by thanking ALL of you for your messages your calls, your emails and your wall postings on FB, you guys are awesome and that really REALLY helped me get through this last week, it's been a real winner..meh. But the last 24 hours of my life have been the best time I've spent so far in France...I have made friends...that's right, I have more than the other six lecturers in my cell phone, damn that feels good. For the last couple of weeks I've been meaning to get down to one of the largest cafés here in Tours called Le Palais (the palace, I find this very amusing because it is anything BUT). where they host a weekly evening event called café des langues (café of languages). It's hosted by some kind of organization, I'm not exactly sure, but basically it's a place where people of all ages can come down and involve themselves in language exchanges.

So last night I wandered warily down to the palace (tee hee) and was really exhausted and not expecting to stay long (as I had to leave to go to my friend Amanda's apartment to shower because we have had NO hot water for THREE days in my apartment, not that I'm bitter at all about having to run down three blocks from someone else's house at night with my hair dripping wet, in my PJ's, dirty clothes in one hand, all of my toiletries in the other...but that's another story). Anyway:) I made it down to the cafe, asked the bartrice (lady bartender) if that was in fact the place and she directed me outside...this was very helpful as outside consists of about 50 tables with people eating and no signs what so ever to direct you to where the supposed langue section of the café is. So I sat down and nervously looked around, and there were two other nervous looking people there too who promptly asked me (one in a german/french accent and the other in an italian/french accent) if I was there for the café. I sat down to join them ordered myself a pichet (what I thought was a small caraf of wine but turned out to be 50cl of wine....this is a lot people, not to mention it cost me 10 euros and I could've bought three bottles of wine at the store for that, oh well) and we proceeded to run down our statistics; this is a conversation I have gotten really good at, so I sound really good at french when I ask and respond to the obligatory questions about who I am, where I'm from and what I do. I swear if one more person tells me how beautiful Texas is though, I will punch them.

Slowly but surely of the course of the next few hours more and more people arrived and I found myself looking around at the 100+ attendees of the café at one point, seeing a table of french, italian and americans all trying to speak german, another mixed table speaking Italian, three people at our table working on chinese, and even behind me a table of sign language; I found myself overcome with emotion for the most beautiful display of human communication that had broken down all walls and barriers of cultural stereotypes and been replaced by an ernest want and desire to both learn a language, but also to connect with other human beings on your level. It was really quite remarkable. I spent the majority of the evening chatting with Elsa and Julie (two frenchies who'd spent a year in Ireland and both speak with Irish accents in English, this is most amusing), Alessandro and some German girl whose name I don't remember, who were basically like the european version of Peace Corps or habitat for humanity, and Benjamin and Matthieu, two other frenchies that are medical students in their second year here. I had an amazing time trading back and forth from English to French all night and I learned all kinds of new fun vocab...like last night J'étais pas soûl, j'étati seulement pompette (which means, last night I wasn't totally bombed, just a little tipsy...sorry mom and dad:). I got everyone's numbers and am definitely planning on meeting up with Elsa and Julie this week:) I have friends YAY, I finally exist on my own in France, that feels good.

Also this morning, after being woken by what sounded like a heard of wild buffalo in my apartment, but was really my new roommate Camille (who is as tiny and cute as she sounds) how someone that tiny can make so much noise is beyond me, my package from my mommy finally arrived!! It's been in transit for three weeks and has been held hostage at the post office for at least a week, until I sent an email stating exactly what was in it...ridiculous. I have my ice skates so I am definitely hitting the ice tonight, after waiting around all day for the repair man to FINALLY come and look at our water box and fix the fact that we all scream bloody murder when we take a shower because it's so freaking cold. Also in the box was one of the coolest things anyone has ever given me. My mom made me a beautiful thought box and inside are 365 inspiration sayings or quotes all loving written and decorated on separate leaflets of beautiful paper, one saying for each day, when life is trying. This is really one of the coolest things I've ever gotten, thanks mommy, I love it:)

Well that's all for now, life is good today, but I'm going to crawl back into bed since all I get to do today is wait for the repair man to come:) I get paid for this, it's amazing. Although I still don't have access to my money in my bank account so it's not that amazing, yet:)

I miss you, I love you,

Sarah:)

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