Last night my friends and I planned a night out in Bordeaux, and it turned out to be really awesome. My family had already planned a dinner party with two couples (Marc, Françoise, Victoire, et Brigitte) so I decided to stay at my house a little bit longer than expected which is good because it turned out to be a great lesson on how the French entertain. The eldest son of my French parents got married this past summer so we watched the wedding video, which was kind of cool for me to see that too. Apparently at French weddings, big hats are à la mode, there were so many! While we were watching the video we were eating paté on croutons and croutons with fromage et du jambon (the whole thing had been baked though so it was like bacon…it was so good) and drinking champagne. For dinner we started with a paté and bread and a white wine. I felt so refined at this point though because I thought to myself, “oh white wine, I wonder if we are having fish”, and wouldn’t you know it, we were totally having fish. I had to leave after this part of the meal though because my friends and I were all meeting up at La Victoire at 10, and it was 10:30. So I left to go and the moment I stood up I knew that I was a bit tipsy. Fortunately I bought a French cell phone, so I called mes amis on my way to the tram and found out that they were at a sports bar at La Victoire. When I got to the bar there were a lot of people, but not even half as many as when I left. There were so many students there! The French universities do exams differently than in the United States. They wait until after vacation to begin exams, so they finish school before the holidays and then begin finals after new years. Yesterday was the end of exams for l’Université de Bordeaux 2, which is the medicine and psychology school that is the reason why it was so ridiculous. The bar that we went to was also very weird. It was a sports bar with a tiny dance floor in the middle, but of course college students like to push our limits so the dance floor expanded through the entire middle of the place so it was nearly impossible to get from the front to the back and get to the bar to order drinks. I met up with my friends though and had a few drinks and danced a little (also very different from the U.S., there is definitely not as much sexual pressure in France which is nice). When we left at around one, there was a huge line just to get into the bar, apparently ten is early to start the evening and one is way too early to leave, but leave we did, which was good because we planned a trip to a farmers market at Saint Michel and I needed to get up at 8! I am so happy that I am finally learning about French culture, I mean I love my grammar class but going out and experiencing Bordeaux is so important for becoming bilingual and really understanding France as a country. I only hope that once classes start I will be able to make a few French friends and really learn what their lives are like.
J’aime bien la France!
Mes nouveaux amis!
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