Friends, Neighbors, Countrymen,
So, I wrote this post, like, two weeks ago, but it never made it to the interwebs because of my shotty internet access, I’ve decided to just post it, as is, instead of trying to edit it, because it is old… Anyway, enjoy!
I can’t believe that it is Tuesday, again, already! Last week was one of those week where there were not enough hours in the week, but in the best possible way. I still have very little idea exactly what it is that I am supposed to be getting out of this conference, substantively, but I came for the networking and the caliber of people with whom I have become friends, here, has exceeded any expectations I could have had, so I still think it was worth the trip. I hope I can remember all of my adventures for last week, I suppose I should start from the beginning… ;P
Last Monday, we had class all day, then I went to dinner in one of the university cafeterias, for dinner, and as I have mentioned previously, the food was blah, at best, but it was cheap and it was sustenance, so it got the job done. Then, Monday evening, I went to a “live coding party” (we weren’t told that that was what it was until we had been there for a while…) with a bunch of heroes from 3 continents. :P The show wasn’t great, but the company was, so we sat outside in this courtyard on the campus, here, at the University of Strasbourg and hung out and laughed and laughed.
On Tuesday, I think we just hung out, but I don’t even remember…
Wednesday was kind of out of control. Thursday was Bastille Day, which is, obviously, a national holiday in France, so we didn’t have class. As a result, we went to class, on Wednesday, obviously, then we went out to dinner (I’m pretty sure we had kabab, but that could just be because I feel like that is all I eat, here), opened some wine and hung out in front of the dorm and drank for a few hours, then we decided we were going to go to this nightclub, but it was one of those places with the red rope and the list and they wouldn’t let us in, so the group kind of split up and I ended up on the boat with the nightclub, again, with a couple of my American friends (again). They played a really strange mix of music, that night. There was an unfortunate amount of French rock and pop played, but they broke it up with some MC Hammer and 80s delights, so we stayed and danced the night away. Literally. When they finally closed it down and we left, we came up out of the cabin and I looked to the Eastern sky and said “is that the SUN I’m seeing over there?!?!” Someone looked at a watch and said, “yup, it’s 5AM…” Can you imagine?!?! 5AM on a Wednesday night!! I’m getting too old for this nonsense. :P Still, we headed back to the dorm and decided, at that point, that we might as well watch the sunrise, at that point. It was a pretty lame sunrise, but it was a great night. J
On Thursday, I slept in (obviously) until about 2:30PM, then pulled myself together because there were FIREWORKS to be seen!! We had another get-together at my professor’s apartment and I when I offered to bring something, my professor asked me to bring something sweet (besides, and I quote, “your own self”, she’s a gem), but a lot of places were closed so I went to this pastry shop by the dorm and bought all of the macaroons the guy had. It was pretty funny, because he was shocked that I wanted all of them. I said “tous” (all) and gestured to all of them with my hand and he said “two?” and held up two fingers and I said “non, tous” and made a more elaborate hand gesture. He still wouldn’t believe that I was buying every macaroon he had in the display case, so when he asked how many, again, I just told him I wanted twelve. He got out a box and asked about flavors (there were chocolate, pistachio, and coffee macaroons in the case). I didn’t know he would have more so when he went in the back and came out with raspberry, I was pretty excited. He packed them in a box for me, then, before he rang them up, he did the math on a calculator to show me how much it was going to cost. When I agreed without any argument or shock, he decided to throw in six Turkish delights for free and was very gracious. It was pretty neat. J
I went to the party at the professor’s apartment with my classmates and there was all kinds of good food and the macaroons were a big hit. After we ate and cleaned up, it was time to go find our spot for the fireworks. As I may have mentioned before, I bought a corkscrew in Geneva that was the best investment I have made, on this adventure. It comes with me pretty much everywhere I go, and is often accompanied by plastic cups and at least one bottle of wine. Wine is the best way I know of to deal with the lack of air conditioning pretty much everywhere (at least when it’s hot, that is), so it’s been kind of a staple. I bought this cute little cloth bag at Gap, the other day, to carry my books and computer to and from class in, and it has also really come in handy. That night, I discovered that it quite nicely holds a bottle of wine, cups, the corkscrew, my wallet and other necessary, my airplane blanket, and a sweatshirt.
Anyway, we got the park and sat down on the blanket with the wine and waited for the fireworks to start. While we waited, one of my classmates who is a real gem (and happens to have coined the term “jank”, which is simply brilliant) came up with games for us to play. We played a game where we had to come up with names of comedians that started with certain letters that was pretty fun. As for the fireworks, well, those of you who know me best know how I feel about fireworks (as for those of you who may not, they are among my favorite, favorite things in the whole world, ever), and, growing up in St. Louis, I had access to some of the best fireworks displays in the country, if not the world, so I’m not too easily impressed. That being said, it turns out that the spot we picked was AMAZING and the fireworks were really, really cool.
After the fireworks were over, we wandered back to the dorm to drink more wine and play more games. Some of my Americans and some of my Europeans and some new friends we made, that night, and I went to this patio in the back of the dorm and sat on the blanket, again, and played drop, screw, or marry. The premise of the game is that someone in the circle gives someone else a list of three people (and house rules, in this case, said it couldn’t be anyone in the circle, other than that, anyone is fair game) and the other person has to say who they would drop off a cliff and wave goodbye as they plummet to their death, who they would sleep with for one night, and who they would marry, which entails sleeping in the same bed and generally living together for one year, but the chooser can determine whether said marriage is consummated. The game was SUPER fun, because I was playing with a group of really clever, well-educated people, so the lists of people were pretty ridiculous. They ranged from Tweetybird to Lavar Burton to Jesus, Karl Marx, Charles De Gaulle, our professors from the three courses, and folk singers from the 1970s, among many others. This went on late into the night, but eventually we ran out of wine and went to bed. :P
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