Pfft!

Bienvenue chez McDo! If you can imagine this, I am sitting in the middle of a beautiful French downtown in a three story McDonalds™! The internet is free, so I came here today with my friends Julia and Marie. John Kitch, I just got through eating a BigMac™! I think I’m going to throw up!

Good news, the internet at the Lounge Café stopped working! STORY OF MY LIFE! I went there last Tuesday night with Rachel only to discover that the patron hadn’t paid the bill. When I went to pull up the Baylor homepage, I received a message giving me the option to pay the bill. I told the waitress and she got her boss to come and look at it. When he went to get his computer, the option to pay the bill did not come up for him. He therefore had to take my computer and pay the bill with his credit card. I now have all of his information and have to e-mail it to him. C’est la vie!

Before the adventure at the café I had another little pleasant adventure in the rain. Hélène told me that there would be a group of prayer and praise for college and career students at a local Catholic church at 20h45 Tuesday night. So, after dinner, I grabbed my coat and umbrella and walked from the apartment to Abbaye aux Hommes. On my way there, the wind almost knocked me over several times. It was crazy! When I finally saw the towers of the Abbaye I got very happy; however, when I actually got to the Abbaye, the lights were off and the doors were locked. I just laughed. I looked around the back to see if they had met somewhere else, but all of the lights were off. I called home to see if Hélène knew of any other place they might be, but I was unfortunately out of luck. I went ahead and walked to Saint Pierre to see if there might possibly be something going on there, but it was the same situation. No lights and all the doors were sealed. I’m sure there were cameras watching me walk all over the city in the rain like an idiot. I decided to go home and get my laptop to go to the Lounge Café to do some homework and that’s when I realized that their internet wasn’t working any longer. When I left the café I got all the way home (almost an entire mile away) and realized that I had left my laptop adapter at the café. I therefore walked all the way back to the café in the rain and luckily got my adapter right before they closed. I got quite a bit of exercise that day!

Earlier that night at dinner I got the opportunity to make fun of Yves as he grabbed an apple and asked his mother to peal it for him. I about died! I asked him how old he was just to verify and Hélène just laughed as she took the apple and PEELED IT! I told them that if I had asked my mother to peel an apple for me that she would have said, “the maid died!” I now make fun of Yves every time I think about the time he asked him mother to peel him an apple.

Wednesday night dinner was served at almost 21h00! It seems that Yves tried to call his dad to tell him that he would be getting another ride home from Rugby practice, but Yves-Marie did not have his cell phone. Yves came home, but Yves-Marie was still at the Rugby club waiting for him. They tried to call Yves-Marie to tell him that Yves was already at the house, but he still didn’t have his cell phone. We waited and waited, but the time just kept getting later and later. Hélène finally brought me some peanuts to keep me until we ate. Hélène finally decided that we were just going to have to eat without Yves-Marie. Benedict and Yves wanted to wait, but Hélène was too hungry. Finally Yves-Marie showed up, but was surprisingly not mad. Dad, you would have killed me! Before dinner, Hélène had given me a tin of cookies to apologize for the fact that I had to wonder all over town looking for a group that didn’t exist. It was funny.

Last night (Thursday) Linden and Rachel came over to the house for dinner again. Hélène invited them. Anne Caroline (the girl that ate with us this week) was there too. It was very fun and funny at the same time. There were times when things were said that only the family and I understood and then there were things said that only Linden, Rachel, and I understood. Linden just finally turned and spoke with Hélène for about an hour. Yves-Marie was getting very tired. We finally all decided to leave and said goodnight to the Groussiers.

We had been invited by some of the people in Andrew’s class to hang out with them for the night. We went and enjoyed their company for all of five minutes before they all started speaking english with us. (I’m sorry Grandma, I refuse to capitalize the word english any more!) Rachel and I were livid! We spoke French amongst the two of us even though everyone was speaking english. After a while everyone decided to go to some dance place, so we went along just to see. Two friends from Baylor came in to visit Andrew, so they got to experience a real French outing. Rachel and I were sitting around the table with the others at the dance place and all we heard were French accents speaking the english language. Finally Rachel just said, let’s go dance. We did, and we enjoyed ourselves (IN FRENCH!) When we were leaving, we said goodbye to all of the French people and one guy translated everything I was saying in French into english. If he only knew! If you are in the USA right now and you speak another language, I am very proud of you, but please DO NOT speak that language with any foreign people trying to learn english! It’s RUDE! I went ahead and walked Rachel to her house nearby and we spoke French the entire time! When we got to her house, we talked for at least another thirty minutes in French about how much we hate it when French people speak english with us. It was very ironic. We then talked about how were afraid that we would go back home and forget everything.
Last night I had another dream that I was back in the USA speaking english again. This morning I woke up in France! It must have been a nightmare! When I did wake up I was thinking things in French! I therefore decided that I would not be speaking english all day. It has worked so far. People are speaking english to me, but I’ve not responded in that language. As a matter of fact, I’m going to have to leave McDonalds™ soon because my friends are only speaking in english. I don’t think they understand that I want to throw things at them when they do that. I’m going to go to the gym! I hope I get the opportunity to write again soon! We’ll have to see! For now, I’ve had enough english.