The banquet! (Anthony front left)
Pierrick, my crazy awesome dance partner
Benjamin, Mr. I hate France but am going to teach French...and he looks like a king.
Christophe! My awesome crazy dance buddy, "23-year-old dad"
Pretty much my favorite king costume. ever.
30 janvier 2010 (Day 152)
Today was an exciting day. Today I went to a stake YSA activity. It was held in Angers, so I got picked up early in the morning (though my ride was late) to go to the activity. The theme was Kings and Queens, so we were having a dance. I wore my skirt but no one else was dressed yet for the dance. I felt kind of lame, but even more lame when we spent 5 minutes searching for my seat belt in the back of Paki’s car (Paki is a cute girl from Madagascar. Her parents divorced and she comes to church with her cute mom and sister Gaelle). Needless to say, it required the evacuation of everyone from the car and I just felt dumb. It was a pretty drive to Angers.
We got there, signed up, and started the day with a spiritual thought on kings. We talked and read about historical and religious (as in from the BOM) kings (good ones, not the bad ones) and listed their qualities and then saw what qualities they all had in common, qualities that we should have like: humility, walking in truth, justice, being intelligent and wise, having good judgment, etc. We had lunch afterwards, during which Paki told me that Anthony (an 18-year-old from the ward) had a crush on me. But that he also had a crush on all the other girls (okay…). At lunch I talked to a couple of French people, including black-haired Benjamin, a youngster (got sent home from his mission due to illness). He is wanting to go to school either in Utah or BYU-I and then become a French teacher in the US, so we talked about that and he got my email so he can ask questions.
After our picnic lunch (bring your own lunch) we split up into three groups and played a get to know you game. It was a name game and it actually worked pretty well, because I think I remembered everyone’s name in my group (which normally doesn’t happen). After the game we did a rotation of the 3 different activities: food prep, learning dances, and decorating for the ball.
My group’s first workshop (or whatever you want to call it) was decorating for the ball. We started out by working on setting up the tables for the banquet. Pierrick was a lot of help. He is a kid who is pretty fresh off his mission from Germany who speaks English as well. He is pretty eccentric…I think of him as the French version of Michael Dyatt/Nate Schroader. I had the awesome idea of making name tags for the banquet, and Pierrick approved of my decision so we did it. It was pretty cool because it caught on and everyone made their name tags. Mine even got taken by a mysterious admirer (think Little Women and Meg’s glove) at the end of the night.
Our second atelier was learning how to dance. This actually went over really well with everyone. I was pleasantly surprised. Our new dancing skills were even enjoyably used during the dance later! We paired off and started to learn the waltz. Pierrick was very kind (very kind because I am a terrible dancer) and offered to be my partner. I finally really learned how to dance the waltz (it helps to have someone who leads). We then moved on to the minaret. I also did pretty well at learning this ancient dance, and it is pretty fun because it makes you think of Jane Austen novels. Afterwards I was less successful at learning the lindy or something like that. I did okay (Pierrick was pushing, lol) but I couldn’t get the turning part down. We also kept running into people so Pierrick took me out into the hall to try to teach me. I failed. I did start to teach him some Charleston though. The next dance to learn was the Madison (a line dance). I tried for about 10 seconds and then knew it wasn’t the pen for me to learn. If there was a soccer ball involved, yes, but otherwise not happening. Instead I sang the song to everyone (Man I feel like a woman) and tried to make Gwanelle (a girl from the ward around 18/19) feel better about not being able to do it either. I definitely got her to laugh, so it was a successful attempt.
Our last atelier was helping in the kitchen. There wasn’t really anything to do except for wake for the quiches to bake and then put in a new one so we hung out, having arm wrestling contests and playing the piano. Ruben, a boy in the group is going to bring his guitar next time for us to play. I am so excited! Everyone else changed for dinner once it was time. There were some pretty sweet costumes.
But let’s be honest, dinner was kind of lame. There were carrot sticks and you got one slice of quiche, that is it. I sat by some pretty funny kids. This one boy was pretending to be THE king so he was demanding really funny things, including another fork for me. You see, I broke two plastic forks trying to be lady like and eating my quiche with a fork. I guess I am just so strong…
After the dinner we put away the tables and chairs and started our (very long) dance party. It was a lot of fun. Christophe, one of the YSA stake leaders from my ward, was crazy! He was dancing around and having a blast, so I danced with him. We’d go running around trying to get other people to dance. Some rock and roll song came on so he danced-danced with me because I’m American and it was an American song! The old man’s got skills! I danced a slow with some boy who cutted in my dancing with Gwanelle. He never told me his name, but he served his mission in Canada and so he knows Josh Burch, a kid I know from high school who is serving in Canada. The world is so small. I danced with Benjamin, the anti-France frenchie as well as Ruben. Ruben was…interesting. He told me that when he has his pilot’s license he will take me flying and at the end of the dance he kissed my hand after having his arm in my armpit the whole dance (how romantic…not. At least not from him). I enjoyed dancing to Grease “You’re the One That I Want” singing ALL the lyrics with Isabel and trying to learn the moves to some French disco song. I must say that I enjoyed dancing most with Pierrick. He liked to say some phrase (I can’t remember anymore what it was) in a hilarious accent to make me laugh. It worked. We danced the minaret and several other songs. We danced a slow (but not waltzing, which I was okay with) and three other dances. I don’t know what to call them because they were all different- like mamba and country swing kind of stuff minus the country music. Mostly I got spun a lot and had a lot of fun. I even got dipped…successfully. It is the first time that anyone has ever succeeded at dipping me…I’m just not a very trusting person. I had a lot of fun “letting” my hair down and everyone thought I was a good dancer because 1. I danced like every song and 2. Pierrick- when you got a good lead you can’t help but faire semblance to look good!
All good things do come to an end though, as did the dance around 11pm or so. We stayed and helped clean up and started a mini-massage line. By this point it was apparent that Ruben was interested in me and not very happy that I had danced most of the night away with Pierrick. This was manifest by two things: Ruben cutting the massage line in front of Pierrick (who has magic hands) so that I was getting a lame-o massage from Ruben, who now has my number because he asked for it. And my picture…but he asked for that one whilst I was eating a carrot…awkward. Putting on coats Benjamin put my scarf over my head (thanks boys) and I had a nice ride home wanting to sleep. I got home around 12:30am or so and ended up staying up even later talking to Utah friends.
