*(see note at the bottom for the title explanation)
hello, faithful (i hope) readers, and welcome to week 4 of rachel’s france updates!
in this installment, i will simply relay anything interesting i did this week.
ready?
you suuuuuuure?
okay let’s go!
last sunday, i had my second week at l’Eglise Amour Foi Esperance. apparently i missed the memo that it was baptismal sunday? two twenty-somethings got baptized, but not until they told their conversion stories and there was much applause and love from the church. for a tiny church, they (we?) sure are a “full of the joy of the Lord” bunch! it’s amazing. after each one was baptized, we sang a song, and there was a line of people to hug the soaking-wet girl/guy. oh, and i may have forgotten to mention that we take communion every week. and it’s still grape juice, lol.
monday, i went on a little shopping excursion to a huge CD/video games/DVD/bookstore called Fnac (pronounced, well, like fuh-nack. who knew?). i spent my money wisely, even though, in typical rachel fashion, i was going gaga over the fiction section and the books-in-english section of the bookstore section, and running to the little “listen to the CD before you buy it” station every 10 minutes in the music section. i ended up with a 100 song compilation of piano music, a tiny french dictionary of my own (because a) the one i’m borrowing from patrick and zabeth is HUGE, and b) it’s nearly impossible to buy one in the u.s. that isn’t french-english/english-french), and a french translation of pablo’s (neruda, in case you, um, don’t know me that well) 100 love sonnets. all was well until i waited to get home to check my receipt. turns out i’d been charged twice for that CD compilation. oops. how was i supposed to prove that i only bought ONE?
now, i know it’s generally a good shopping practice to check the receipt before you leave the store, but it’s one that i’d forgotten until then.
tuesday, i had my theater class. it’s probably my favorite class, as i usually lol enough for the entire week in those four hours (2 on tuesday, 2 on friday), due to hilarious exercises in which we, for example, express a strong emotion without speaking, repeat tongue-twisters together, or walk like an animal of our choosing. this week, a french boy participated in our class.
“rachel,” you say, “you’re in france. of COURSE there are french boys in your classes!” well, you’d be wrong. my program is just for “foreigners” learning french, so the presence of a native french speaker is, yes, unusual. i’m not gonna lie, he was GORGEOUS. i wanted to do a stereotypical “oh la la!”…but i restrained myself.
i also went back to Fnac and successfully got back my 10 euros i was overcharged without a problem. i always run into the nicest people 
.
wednesday, i had a rather humbling lesson on french politeness. the previous day, a friend of zabeth’s had come over with a child she was babysitting (perhaps her grandson), and they were talking when i came back from class. i neglected to say hello, and just plopped down and started making faces at the adorable baby. this was addressed at dinner, along with the fact that i’d been neglecting to ask how patrick and zabeth’s day had gone while i was at class/out having adventures. oops. i keep forgetting that the french place a bigger emphasis on politeness, and that it really matters if you neglect the subtle rules that govern it. oy. since then, this has been rectified. i realized i’d been having difficulties before because of my own inherent awkwardness of just being looked at when i come home, and THEN i realized they were looking at me because i WASN’T saying anything. oops.
thursday, besides being the longest day ever (well, it’s that way every week), was perked up in the middle by a nice lunch downtown. my new friend from church, liz, is an american who moved here 30 years ago from seattle for “a number of reasons” and has been here every since. she helps lead worship every few weeks. we had lunch, along with her friend (whose name i’ve forgotten) at a tiny cafe run by an american woman. you can (and are in fact supposed to) order in english! yay! (if you’re ever in the area, it’s called The Black and White Cafe) i had a chicken-and-fresh-mozzarella sandwich and APPLE PIE. like, the way americans make it HOMEMADE. ahhhhh. i’m going back just for pie. srsly.
friday was uneventful and nice. after my morning class (theater again), i came back for lunch, etc. fridays are also grocery-shopping days. today i went searching for another interesting magazine, which i found in Rock & Folk. apparently it’s a standard for music here and has been around since at least the 60′s! not gonna lie, the biggest selling point is that it included a music compilation (dead weather, yeah yeah yeahs, passion pit, wilco, the love me nots, and many other good tunes). i also finished my second Jonathan Safron Foer book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close…and wow. i almost cried. it was moving and hilarious, i highly recommend it. this was a good and bad decision. good because i can’t think of anything i’d rather do on a nice friday afternoon than read. bad because i didn’t/don’t have another book to read afterwards. my aunt has a veritable library, but they’re all in french, and i’m not quite brave enough to attempt one of those yet. tomorrow i’ll hit the library before class, they have a good collection of novels in english.
annnnnnnd yesterday i had my first “night outing.” my new friend brigit and i saw District 9 (in english with french subtitles) and then hit mcdonalds. we had our own little america, briefly, until i looked down at my sprite-without-ice, out the window at the half-dozen kebab places nearby, and over my shoulder at the tight-knit little groups of french teens eating. but the music was kelly clarkson/eric hutchinson/etc, so it was a bit surreal.
today i had church (which was WOW, a guy from ethiopia spoke, really made me think), and went apple-picking with the fam (in my skinny jeans, because that’s how cool i am). i managed to convince them to buy pears too. yay!
*title: “ecueuter” [uh-kuh-tay] is a french verb specifically used for taking the ends off of fresh green beans (les haricots verts [layz-harry-coh-vair]). there is no equivalent in english that is just one word and not general like “remove” and i spent upwards of half an hour confirming this to the fam, because they were convinced that there was an english equivalent. no, there is not. “j’ecueute les haricots verts” is a lot simpler than saying “i’m removing the end stalk thingys from the green beans.” alas, english quasi-fails in this case.
