PA's Birthday Weekend!

On Friday I had a lucky break when a prof was absent, so my eight hour workday went down to five, finishing at 3:30. That night, I went out to a pizza dinner at Trevi with PA, Adrien, Wajd, and Philouze. His 25th birthday party started right afterwards in my apartment with his usual crowd of friends. At midnight, we could all sing him happy birthday!

Shortly after midnight, Caitlin called me to meet at the train station because she was walking up from another party. I had promised her a night of clubbing, but PA's friends weren't ready to leave, so I headed out by myself. We went to Pym's and danced for an hour or so before PA called me--they wouldn't let them in without IDs (which is weird because none of us had ever been asked for an ID in France!). So his group headed to another club, Espace. Caitlin and I left ours and found some nice kids in the street to show us the way to Espace. They apparently thought we were their age, and when I said Caitlin and I are English teachers, one guy said he wished he has a hot English teacher! Haha!

Unfortunately, Espace didn't let them either--I'm guessing it was just too many guys in the group. We went back to my place to close out the party around 4am. What was super exciting is that I could wear my pretty new dress:

Saturday afternoon, PA and I took the train to Vitré for his and his niece Clémentine's birthday festivities. PA ended up with some new clothes and a little guide to Washington in honor of our GWU choice :) We had really delicious pork and potatos with blue cheese sauce for lunch and galettes for dinner. Mmmm!

Sunday morning, PA and I went to his basketball club for a 10:30 game. The last quarter was super close going back and forth by 2 or 3 points... In the last nine seconds, it was 71-72 in favor of the visitors. PA's team ran down court--PA was supposed to take the last shot, but a guy blocked him. PA passed the ball to a younger player who shot and missed. PA grabs the rebound and shoots with one second left--AND MAKES IT!!! A buzzer-beating, game winning shot! It was AWESOME! I was so excited to be there for that game!

Phew! Also, Sunday was the big family party day for 4 year old Clémentine. Both sides of the family came to Vitré for a long aperatif with hors d'oeurves, foie gras, filet mignon, potatos, asperagus wrapped in bacon, cheese, and two birthday cakes of fruit and chocolate! PA's nephew Martin (age 2) sleepily asked to sit in my lap, probably mistaking me for his mom, but then he actually stayed there to play with his truck and animals and chatted with me. I learned some new animals from his book: moufette (skunk), paon (peacock), poulpe (octopus), poussin (chick), hippocampe (seahorse), and coccinelle (ladybug). I like little kids because their vocabulary is similar to mine ;)

Now PA and I are back in Rennes readying ourselves for another week of work/classes. Only 16 workdays in 4 weeks left for me! Hooray!

FYI, we did our time change, so I'm back to six hours of difference from EST.

My 100th Post! Quel drame !

Quel drame ! What drama!

Saturday was chilly again, but Caitlin, Katherine and I braved the wind to go to the Place de Lices market around 9am. I mostly just wanted mini-muffins, and I got 16 to have two of each flavor! I also had to go to the central bank branch and get a bank check to pay for the Paris apartment in June. Oh, the joys of explaining myself in French to strangers...

We also ended up buying food for lunch, and I tried paella, rice with mussels, shrimp, calamari, chicken, steak, chorizo, and yummy spices. We sat in the Tchai House for awhile too, a tea house/café place with the only chai tea lattes in town. Caitlin and I napped in the afternoon while our third went on a rendez-vous with a male assistant ;) Apart from a quick stop at H&M for returns, we were in for the evening and made tacos with an El Paso kit that Ma sent me in the most recent package (eating the leftovers now, yum!).

After that, I decided that I wanted to go clubbing. Caitlin was easily swayed, so I prettied myself up and we went to Le Delicatessan, a club set in the old Prison Saint-Michel with stone vaulted rooms, around 12:45am. Tangent here: French clubs don't open until midnight, but they stay open until 5, 6 or 7am! In the US, it's more like 10pm opening and 2am closing! Ack! We went "early" because girls were free before 1:30, and we got waved through the line by the bouncer who spoke English with us and thought we were cool. He even knew where Tennessee was!

So at this point, the club was still rather empty inside, so we got (incredibly expensive) drinks and settled at a table to wait out the slow times. Two French guys from Normandy came up to talk to us--one was a baker whom I complemented on the deliciousness of French bread, and the other had actually worked in East Tennessee for awhile and had been to Knoxville! WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! Lol!

When the dance floor was fuller, we joined in and met some other people who wanted to speak Franglais with us! I suppose they heard us speaking American ;) I talked to another French guy who had worked in Chicago, so we reminiced a bit about the Windy City. It was a super fun night, and tons of people wanted to talk to us! I'm so happy we did it! We got home around 4am, and Katherine was sound asleep on the air mattress.

The next morning, Katherine got up early to go to the ice skating rink, and Caitlin and I joined her after a few more hours of sleep. Katherine is a skating pro, so she showed adept Caitlin some tricks while I wobbled around a few times near the wall. I think my last ice skate was Freshman year of college! People held my hand the whole time then... Sigh...

It was intense but a good excuse to get out of the apartment on a boring Sunday. The big crisis occured when we returned to my apartment and the electricity was out! I, of course, freaked out and called the electric company and my landlord, but then Caitlin found the breaker box downstairs and pushed a button that fixed everything! Hooray! Thanks to her for pulling me through all the troubled times in France! :D

Katherine left us for home and a skype date with her sister, and Caitlin is bumming here with me until her 7:15pm train. Phew! What a wonderful, exciting weekend for the occasion of my 100th post! Thanks for hanging in there, friends!