Day 25: A Little "Gout"of Everything

25 septembre 2009 (Day 25)
Before I forget, I need to recount my favorite part of yesterday. There is a boy from Vietnam in my classes and yesterday before our class he told me (in French) that “La vie est belle” or “life is beautiful” and that it is always like that for me because I am just always so cheerful and happy. I really appreciated that. He is a nice kid and actually speaks French very well.
And back to today…
I woke up long before the sun showed its majestic red self (it is always reddish/orange when the sun rises here). I scurried off to my oral class. We have been practicing argumentation. Mme Sanson said I did a good job on my paper (I was the only one she didn’t have something negative about it to say) and we continued to practice finding themes and questions in statements. There was one regarding marriage. I asked about PACS which is kind of like a marriage, but “more equal” and can be a hetero- or homo- sexual couple. Anywho, that opened a huge pack of worms. Karen, who is a very fierce married Catholic latina was up in arms about the idea of marriage not being a big deal. She then continued to try and argue with Mme Sanson who claims no religion and is in a PACS. Karen kept on repeated the same ideas over and over and none of us could figure out her point. Our teacher tried to point out that it is a cultural difference, but Karen still continued to tell us about how everyone is baptized and Catholic in Colombia(?). This seems to be a frequent thing, arguing with the professors. We have truly embrassed the adage that “The French have a lot to say about nothing.” (Or something thereabouts).
We had some of our other classmates join us in theatre today (You choose 6 credits that are from a variety of classes that aren’t obligatory). We worked on memorized and pronouncing. Boy am I bad at memorizing! It was a fun class though. I had lunch again with Anana, a girl from Ghana. She is super nice, but very articulate in her critiques of things. She likes making interesting comments. None have been as interesting as the one’s I have heard about my big 1L stainless steel water bottle. One woman asked me if it was coffee, and my History teacher joked today that it was whisky. But Anana and I had a delicious lunch of chicken cordon bleu.
History was awesome again as usual, because, “Historians propose interpretations, nothing more” as does Monsieur Touvron. He just knows so much! We talked a lot about the Tiers Etat. I learned that monsieur comes from mon sieur- which is “my lord”. I also found out that if you meet someone with a du/de in front of their last name that means there ancestors were most likely noble and kept that du/de which signals that one is noble. I also learned about the triangular commerce that occurred between Nantes, Africa, and the Americas.
I went to a “welcome tea party” for foreign students before the relief society barbecue. I talked to some Frenchies and found the equivalent to an E.L.F.udge cookie in France. This of course took me 2 cookies and 27 minutes later to realize, but that is okay because I adore ELFudge cookies.
After the welcome party (that didn’t have any tea I might add) I hopped on the tram to go to the Relief Society Activity. We had a little lesson and then we ate. But before we ate, I got to talk/mostly listen to missionary work! Isabel brought a friend from her work who is interested in the church. I got to see Isabel’s hostess mom at work being a real missionary! She answered her questions and told about her own conversion and why she believes. I even got to help answer some of her questions, and oh I did badly. I didn’t know how to respond to “Why is Christ going to come again” to someone who knows nothing about the church, let alone in French! I have a long way to go before being a great missionary, but I am really excited because this woman is interested in learning more and is going to meet with the missionaries! It is so exciting! I am also thinking of bringing Anana to church sometime. She said she was a member of some Baptist-protestant-something else church, but she doesn’t smoke or drink, she believes in Christ, marriage, and a little bit of the spirit too I think. I hadn’t even thought of asking her, but we started talking about religion during oral French when Karen was on her tangent about religion. I am also thinking I could maybe introduce M. Touvron to the church a little. I don’t know how well that would boil over, because he is very analytical and I’m guessing atheist. But he is super into genealogy, so I think that could be an “in” with him to at least introduce the church a little although I don’t think he is quite ready for it yet.
I ate so much food! I had a little “gouter” or taste of everything. There was couscous, rice with tomatoes and corn, tomatoes, some sea food salad, something that I don’t know what it was, and “real” sausages/hot dogs. They were really good! I actually enjoyed them a lot a lot. And following tradition, we had cheese after because that is “what you do” after having saucissons in France. It was all really good cheese as well. They had this word game that they played. It was so rowdy and lively, it was a lot of fun to watch. Afterwards we had dessert…yummy. I had LOTS. But I had to try everything! I had something that reminds me of german pancakes with fruit in it, an apple tart, pear cake (I need to learn how to make it!), chocolate cake, and so on. Isabel brought cookies which everyone were raving over (they were so so). You see, there is this tragic flaw about the French, the do not know real cookies. There was a young woman who asked me if I knew how to make cookies and if I could show her. I just laughed. If she only knew how often I make cookies. I could do it without the recipe or measuring utinsels, but it will be interesting trying to make cookies here because the brown sugar is different, as well as the ovens and the altitude. After all our delicious desserts we played murder in the dark. It was so amusing, because when they turned off the lights everyone was screaming with fright like little school girls; and it was the Relief Society! Everyone is so nice here; they gave me four “hot dogs” to take home, as well as a ride most of the way home. It was much appreciated since I don’t like being on the tram by myself at night. Now I am completely stuffed, tired, yet content, hoping that my stomach won’t rebel against having eaten so much today, especially all that sausage.
French word of the day: vilain (adj) no, this is not an evil person. Vilain is another way to say “ugly” in French.