Birthday Bashes and Bangs

My apologies for the radio silence, it was my first proper weekend in Nantes and so I spent it properly celebrating my birthday of last week with my fantabulositastic friends I've met here. Hard to believe that I've known these people for less than five weeks.

The wonderful thing about being international is that you are (in most places) a novelty and thus get reached out to far more often than usual.

Five countries represented in this lovely photo. We also had a bunch more people but they bailed earlier.

Yay for friends.

A couple excellent quotes from the evening.

"I don't actually like partying, I just do it because I'm good at it."

"When you watched Harry potter, does it sound different, because it's the same accent as yours?"
(This is a recurring theme. I have friends who are convinced that because my lovely british friend has an accent, she
a) must be a wizard
b) cannot watch Harry Potter because they have the same accent)

Yesterday I went to my host bro's rugby game. Pretty intense, although I understood very little. A lot of punching and ripping clothes. My host family makes fun of my tendency to say "why so much violence?"

Seriously, why all the violence?

After that, had a convo about french humor, aka irony.

"French humor is ironic, par example, you're beautiful."

That's not irony, that's being mean.

Went on a boat ride to the beautiful fishing village on the Island of Nantes. Graffiti, art, statues, whimsy everywhere. I wanna move now.