Vachement Perdu

Today I got vachement perdu (really really lost). As in, the 2 km I had to walk turned into upwards of 12, as I made wrong turn after wrong turn.

Short Adverb lesson:

Vachement: Comes from the word "vache" which means cow. French people love using vache in everyday convo... "Oh la vache" (sort of like our "holy cow"). Vachement means literally "cowly" but actually means "REALLY." Like, damn.

Carrement: Also means very. You'll hear "carrement d'ac" in certain age group conversation. Short for Carrement D'Accord, which means "really in agreement."

Vraiment: Translated literally and truly means "very."

I'm feeling rather tired, and while my host brother likes to tease me about going out all the time, I don't think it is completely that. Partially, bah ouais, but not entirely. Learning a language is vachement difficult, and even with proper sleep I find I'm "dans la lune" (on the moon, aka daydreaming) accidentally in class these days. This happened back home too, at about the one month mark. School is tiring. This doesn't change. Still wish I could go back to hippie school and bake me some cookies all day e'ryday.

Fun experience of the day: trying to explain what a baby daddy/momma was to my writing professor. Ah, the things that arrive in the international student's life.

Some vocabulary for you to enjoy! I got most of this from an article about how the second in command police officer in Paris was arrested/charged for drug trafficking and being generally naughty. I shake my finger at you. Anyways, this is regular CSI jargon.

Puant- stinky. Slangy-wise, it means pretentious, or vain. It was puant of him to think he wouldn't get caught.

Indicateur/Indic- Informant. Sort of like our version of "narcs" typically unsavory people who inform the police in exchange for favors or lessening of sentences. "indic" is the shortening of that.

Voyou- GANGSTER. Salut voyou (what's up, badass?)

tonton- What little kids/everybody call their uncles. Also means men of a certain (older) age, typically men you don't mess with. "les tontons flingueurs" is a cult film from 1963 about gangsters. If you speak fluent-enough french, let's watch it together.

Des Papas Poules- "Father hen." Papas who are very occupied with their children, extremely invested etc etc.

So I filched a magazine from the library today (50.5% sure it was free for the taking...). On the back was the advert for dinosaures... Including the Bambisaur.

The bambisaur is the new velociraptor, it's official.

Sad story of today.

Friend (grabs a chunk of my hair and inspects it): My goodness, your hair is a pretty color. How do you get it to be so blonde?
Ex-Friend: The trick is thinking like a blonde.

Shuddap.

All Weddings Should Be French Weddings

It's really true. I mean this in the sense that one should dance the night away, have a helicopter show up randomly during cocktail hour, nobody gets too drunk and the music is awesome. We (everyone who doesn't have a french wedding) are sooooo stupid not to have a dance like le rock. Gah. I can't get over it. I keep telling people I don't have the words in french to describe my feelings for french weddings. I don't think I do in english either.

Le rock is super fun, though very dizzying. It's good to have a french guy or two nearby to catch you when you're feeling faint. I'm not exactly a pro, but for my first time, I'm not too bad. Some of the dance moves are positively acrobatic. Look up RocknRoll Danse on youtube to get an idea for it. High schools and weddings everywhere should teach it, because it works for all ages (seriously, some 80-year-olds were getting down at 4 am) and it's super fun. To use the french term, "hypersexy."

Where do I begin with the french wedding? Is it the fact that everyone wears hats and there's a hat tree for when the dancing starts? Or that I was told by a Frenchman "If I don't end up with my tie around my head it's not a good wedding?"

I could go into depth about my drunk not-swiss-but-kind-of-french friend who followed me around speaking english. I tried to speak french to him but he had none of it. He told me he had an American accent so I told him I had an Australian accent. There is the same amount of truth in both those statements.

There was continuous humor in the fact that the majority of the songs were in english... And so I was one of maybe five people who understood just how inappropriate Kid Cudi is. Of course they all sing along though. "All the crazy s%^$ I did tonight...."

The biggest compliment of the evening came when I was chatting with an American also in attendance. He told me he had met another guy who said he'd thought I was french. I'd introduced myself in a very french way and continued to hold my own... Score one for the good guys! My host family laughed at me though, and said "We hope you realize you have an accent."

Of course I do. No need to remind me, I'm not getting too cocky. I get made fun of all day every day. ("I think French people like Americans a lot, but Americans like French people more..." -French friend. I'm having a hard time judging the truth of that. They are pretty into a lot of things State-ish here)

What else can I regale you with? The time when the bride and groom got tossed up and down by their friends, or that everyone got on the dance floor to "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)". WOOOOOT ABBA!

Or one of the great aunts telling me that I was "La Belle Americaine" and then following that up with saying that "La Belle Americaine" means a really nice Cadillac or American-ish car. Likened to a car... And loving it.

Dinner with les ados was interesting, mostly because we only had wine, ham and potato chips. So we rolled the chips into ham and had some sophisticated exchange of swear words and opinions about religion. Everyone here smokes like a chimney at French weddings. I guess that's the only thing I'd change, because it makes one nearly asthmatic to be around it all the time. Wheeze, wheeze.

I made probably thirty friends during the evening, all of whom remembered my name. Unfortunately, I was very sleepy and forgot 25/30 such that the next morning when everyone was going "SALUT M----" I gave a very sheepish "Bonjour." Gotta work on that.

Truly, I will guard this experience in my memories for the rest of my life. French Weddings have set the new high for me, but luckily I've got a British one this weekend. Comparison in order?

As one of my Colombian friend's mom's told her "Profitez! Profitez! Profitez bien!"

I like to do the following with my adventures.

"Think of it as research for your memoirs."
-ChuckandCindy

COOKIE MONSTRE!

Note the socks!

This morning I took a tour of the FACs de L'Université. We visited all the classrooms, said hello to everyone (I heard the phrase "come anytime" approx. 20x) and also saw the library. With the handy dandy university card I can rent SIX books at a time. That is twice the number I'm allowed at home. Whether this has anything to do with my late fees is a different matter.

Also in my ever eventful day I was approached by a clown in training, who wanted to practice on me. If I hadn't been late for a rendez-vous I totally would have stayed.

I visited the supermarché with a host brother, and bought some chocolat noir for my baking uses. Learned some interesting French swear words along the way and enjoyed the blaring French radio. To all Minnesotans, be assured, your plight of constant roadwork is shared by Nantes. I think I'm backsliding a little in my french speaking... I seem to become more and more incomprehesible. The benefit of this is everyone's laughing, but my face may soon mould into a constant expression of confusion.

There was one thing I did correctly today! I made chocolate chip cookies. And they are not half bad! They are closer to madeleines in consistency than the usual AMURican ones, but the dark chocolate makes it all worth it. Never again will I cook with milk chocolate. I've created a household of cookie monstres and restored some American pride :)

After dinner we had a cultural exchange of amusing internet videos. My favorites were Sarkozy explaining he had gotten drunk with the Russian head of state due to being a lightweight and the Michael Jackson "Bite It" video. If you parle francais, look it up. Hilarious.

French humor still largely escapes me, probably due to my lack of fluency. All this will change, one hopes.