French dinners and late-night parties

Kelsey’s host parents are out of town this weekend so they told her she could have some friends over one night and cook dinner. So yesterday evening, Allison, Jennifer and I met her at a market near her apartment. For only 5 euros each, we constructed a dinner of pasta, salad, bread, cheese and wine. I made the pasta; we bought some garlic and basil tortellini and I mixed in some cooked mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. It was a delicious feast that left us wishing we had our own apartments where we could cook all the time.

There is a son in Kelsey’s host family and he was home so he ate with us too. He is our age and he knows a lot of English, so we had some interesting Franglais (mixing of Français and Anglais) conversations. We talked about French versus American universities. There is nothing like fraternities and sororities in France, so trying to describe Greek life to him (in French) was particularly amusing. Jennifer has the movie Legally Blonde so we told him we would make him watch it sometime to see the stereotypes of our school.

I probably returned to my apartment around midnight, only to find myself in another French-emersion situation. My host mother has two older sons (in their 30s) who live elsewhere, and she had told me that one son was having a party here last night because his apartment wasn’t big enough. But I didn’t expect to come home at midnight at find 40-plus people in our TINY apartment. When I first walked in I was pretty unnerved because it was all older French people who had no idea who I was.

The mother wasn’t there because she was staying at the son’s apartment, but luckily the daughter, Donatienne, was there and she found me quickly and saved me! She introduced me to her brother, who was nice, but she didn’t really know anyone else there either so we just mingled a little and ate some hors-d’oeuvres. By then it was getting close to 1 a.m., and we were both tired but we obviously couldn’t sleep through the music and the noise.

We went in my room for a bit a played in Uno, which was funny since I hadn’t played it in years and the French rules are a bit different. Around 2 a.m. we decided to try to get some sleep. I kept telling her I’m in college so I’ve slept through even rowdier parties. Plus, I was especially tired because Friday night I went out with some of the girls to a salsa bar in the Latin Quarter. Even so, I probably didn’t fall asleep until around 3 a.m., when the party finally died down. Definitely an interesting, unexpected evening…