What have I been doing with my life, you ask? How nosy...but I'm feeling indulgent.
I made a friend in a class! Well, actually, I handed a guy a piece of paper and then he asked me if I was going to go to the cafeteria. I took this to mean that he wanted to ask me out and that we were going to be in love. Unfortunately, I didn't have any money on me, so I lied and told him I had a class. The next day, I forgot to bring my backpack with me, so I sat through my one bearable lecture and was heading out of the classroom when I ran into Franco-Algerian BeanieBoy (I identify him from afar by his beanie. It is somehow unique and he is short; I often don't wear glasses. From hereon out he will be referred to as FABB). He asked me if I was in the upcoming class. I was, but I was clearly leaving the room. The obvious answer being no, I told the lie I had to tell so that he wouldn't think I was the type of person to skip classes. Another chance at romance missed.
The next week, determined to turn my luck around, I forced my friend Rouge and Leonie (who is Dutch and Kathleen be jealous) to linger around while FABB asked the professor a question. As I'm writing this I realize I sound really predatory and pathetic at the same time. Like a tiger with a flat tire if tigers had wheels. In any case, I finally got the lunch I wanted. It is at this point that I realized that I do not understand this kid when he talks. He has an accent banlieu which means he speaks with slang and twang and I'm reduced to just nodding along. I ended up agreeing to get coffee with him (or perhaps asking him if he wanted coffee? Sometimes I don't understand him so I ask for clarification on something but I speak in sentence fragments [you've read my blog] and am monotone and so he thinks I'm saying something declarative. It's all very confusing). Coffee was...well, let's put it this way: coffee was three hours of him talking about conspiracy theories. Specifically, him trying to convince me that 9/11 was planned by George W. Bush, me protesting weakly that no, this could not be the case (at the point that someone believes something there's very little point in trying to convince them otherwise. Particularly when your linguistic abilities don't allow you to say much more than "well...those people have their science, but there's another side and they have their science and they say no---
I'm interrupting this story to say that my host mom just did the cutest thing, and she did it in a way that was Solange de chez Solange, as Solange would say (I love Solange!). As I was typing whatever nonsense appears above, she knocks on the door to ask if she can talk with me for a second. Certain that I'm finally going to be disciplined for eating too much bread and cheese, I go into the living room. Turns out she wants to give me some advice about going to Morocco. Granted, she gave some horrifyingly vivid descriptions of people covered in lice and fleas and living on the streets and reasons why I should stay away form them (including a digression in which she described her sister's infection by a parasite that burrowed under her skin that she attrapéd [sometime the French word is just better, ok?] on the metro. THE METRO!).
She then told me to take a shit ton of ammodium (entirely unsure of how to spell that and furthermore too lazy to care) and gave me some medicating and a bunch of packets of tissues (because they don't do toilet paper and you can do that math). She is incredible.
To wrap this shitty post up, I'm going to Morocco, I'm sure I'll have something entertaining to post when I get back, my friend visited me the other week and it was fun and I totally intended to write about it, and I ate so much gum last Tuesday that I actually became physically ill. Oh, I also got a positive shout-out in one of my French classes for...doing something right? Crazy world, I know.
Привет! Меня зовут Катя и я один из друзей Бена. Он очень смешной, да? Вы русские? Давайте разговорим вместе, чтобы я могла лучше говорить по-русски! Мой емейл kpaint@charter.net.
Привет! Меня зовут Катя и я один из друзей Бена. Он очень смешной, да? Вы русские? Давайте разговорим вместе, чтобы я могла лучше говорить по-русски! Мой емейл kpaint@charter.net.
