Bonding

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my host sister, casually slurping some soup while my host mother finished cooking dinner when my host sister turned to me and said, "Teach me how to swear in English." " What?" I glanced nervously around to her mom ten feet away, oblivious to her daughter's request. My host sister laughed and insisted, "What do you say in English?" "Like what?... um... we say "Shit" a lot... "Damn..."fuck..." um..." My host mother sat down at the table and wanted to be in on the conversation: "What are you talking about?" "Swears in English," her daughter replied. She seemed unphased and they both continued to pose questions, "How do you say "putain? Vas te faire foutre?" When would you say that? What do you say when you do something stupid, like, eh, putain!" This continued through dinner, my host mother was impressed with my understanding of French cursewords, and we headed to the living room to watch "Ghost Dog," a movie starring Forest Whitaker as a modern-day samurai versus the mafia. The movie was ok, kind of weird, but there was pretty strong language, most of which didn't make it into the French subtitles. The best part by far, though, was hearing my host mother sitting cross-legged on a cushioned, 18th century-style chair in her glasses with a blanket across her lap, hands folded thereupon, remark, "Oh, they translate "fuh-cking" as "putain." "

The next night the AYA girls and I went out to Mix Club for their student night, and actually got in before midnight this time (woot!). We got in with no problems except me who got stopped and asked, "Attendez, vous avez quel age?" "21." "...Ok." Once in, we had to check all coats, sweaters and large bags seperately which meant getting in actually cost between 2 and 8 euro. The music was your basic techno, nothing we recognized but everyone else whooped at the beginning of a couple different songs... I guess Mix has a lot of regulars. Thankfully we weren't hassled too much as a group of 7 or so girls, although I did get to practice shooting people down, not for my own sake but for C's one time. I was dancing with someone when I looked over to our group to make sure they were still there and I saw C trying to push this 6' something big guy away, and he kept trying to pull her back into him. He seemed determined but she did not look into it at all, so I stepped away from the guy I was dancing with and told the guy in French, "Hey, leave her alone." He said I should mind my own business and my own dance partner. "Cassez-vous! (Get lost, at least I'm pretty sure that's the closest translation.)" at which point he told me to vas te faire foutre (go fuck yourself), and I responded, "Vous!" and pushed him gently on the sternum. He was pretty mad at this point and got up in my face a little more, "You understand what I'm saying? FRENCH ANGRY AHH" but I didn't break eye contact or back down so he gave up on me and turned to my dance partner (Oh, shit, what did I do, I'm gonna get this guy killed and he doesn't even speak this language...) who probably would have been helpless compared to this collosus of a guy, so I put my arm out and stepped in front of him protectively (clearly, I had a better shot in a fight, right?...) but luckily the guy gave up and stormed away. My dance partner asked in heavily accented English, "Is everything ok?" I winced and made a so-so gesture which he seemed to understand and went back to dancing, but I pretty much felt like a bamf. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, we met a few pretty nice people, actually, including this one guy who said to A in French, "Eh, you're russe like me," russe meaning a red-head. She responded, "No, I'm Scottish," thinking he'd meant russe as in the feminin form of "Russian." This continued for a few minutes because it was loud and Adena couldn't hear me explaining, "HE'S TALKING ABOUT YOUR HAIR." We left around 3:30, which got me home by 4, just in time to catch 4.5 hours of sleep before our translation class the next morning...

When I got back from class, my host mother and sister were upstairs in the studio with a famous harpsicordist from Ohio, apparently. She taught for over 30 years at the Conservatory at Oberlin, but is not retired and spends half the year in the US and half the year in Paris. My host sister was interviewing her about the metaphor of the Bach piece's structure as a tree. My host mother was trying to take a portrait shot of her, but the woman was very nervous and kept breaking into laughter or making a strained, surprised-smile face. They asked me to talk with her in English to help her relax. She asked where I was from, she said her daughter had gone to Yale and was now teaching yadayadayada... My host mother stopped her, I needed to talk to her, she needed to talk less. Ok, the harpsicordist asked me about my school, what I was studying in France, well, so far not much because of the strike... Stopped again, could I talk about something more happy? Don't talk about the strike or sad things... Eventually my host sister had her do some theater exercises, look away, turn back slowly, slightly surprised, then smile, come back to center, close your eyes, and smile again... fold over your knees and let your arms hang, come back up slowly and think about your corps... I laughed, my host mother and the harpsicordist laughed, my host sister didn't understand why. "Why, what means "corps" in English?" She meant "body," but didn't realize the French word was a false cognate... "Cadavre,"
my host mother and I said in unison. More slightly nervous laughter ensued.

At 6:00 yesterday I was still waiting for one of my friends to say they'd go to the free Bastien Lucas concert with me at 7:30. It was at Theatre du Chatelet, which meant it would take me half an hour by metro to get there, I'd have to leave before 7. At 6:45, I was still waiting for a response, 6:50, 6:55, 7... Did I want to go by myself? Going to the concert meant skipping dinner chez my host family, meant buying dinner and spending cash elsewhere... He's performing again on Tuesday, but the location is a club in the 18th... If I'm going to go to a concert alone, better at this theater than at that club... So I went alone, and it was great. It was in the foyer of the theater, essentially the formal side room on the third floor of the theater where classy people hang out during intermissions... And it was just this guy and a grand steinway piano and his acoustic guitar. I'd read on his site that Radiohead is one of his main influences, but he played much more classical-style stuff at this concert, my favorite introduction he gave before a song was, "And this is Beethoven, for the guitar, yes, he loved to compose for the guitar, he made great breakthroughs with electronic music as well... but I'm going to play the acoustic version..." After that concert I met up with A and C and Lu to see another group perform at a jazz bar. We noticed there was a sign that said "Consommation obligatoire," basically you're required to order at least one drink. Which would have been fine of the cheapest thing on the menu wasn't juice for 6,20 euro. We hid the menus under a sweater until the band started playing. The singer was awful, a swooping, nasal-toned American(?) girl, and the waiter came by, asked for our order, we hesitated, he indicated the sign on the wall and then pointed to the door. We had a brief discussion of whether or not to stick it out... and unanimously grabbed our stuff and peaced. Once outside, we reaffirmed how much we'd all wanted to leave, didn't like the singer, didn't want to pay for a drink, etc. With nothing else to do, we wandered around for a few hours and then headed home to sleep, finally.