The title has nothing to do with the blog, but you get bonus points if you know the song.
I found out the night before that Camille's parents were leaving for holiday early the next morning(Saturday). This was a slight problem because I had a present to give to them to thank them for all thier hospitality. So I set my alarm for super early to catch them before they left and give them the gift. So I did. They really liked the gift although I am not entirely sure they understood the prpose (stupid language barrier). Oh well Camille can explain it to them when they get back.
Speaking of stupid language barriers, one caused me alot of trouble today. When I woke up the second time (because after I gave Camille's parents their gift I went back to bed, it was way to early) I checked my email to see if I had heard anything from Julien. I hadn't. This worried me because I was supposed to leave to go see him Sunday and it was Saturday morning and I had heard nothing. I had asked Hugo for Julien's phone number the night before (they are cousins), so when I didn't get an email I went downstairs and called him. When I got him on the phone I asked him about the emails. He hadn't responded because he was on holiday. No prob, but then he informed me that I could not come to saty with him this week because he left again for holiday that afternoon. Apparently we had a misunderstanding due to the language barrier. He had sent me an email weeks earlier about his schedule, he wrote it in his broken English and I understood it, or thought I did. The problem was that in the email he made it sound like he was putting the dates of when he was on holiday. Those weren't the dates I was planning on coming so I though there was no problem, but I had it backwards. Those were the days he was home. Apparently he had tried to send another email clarifying this, but I never got it. Anyway basically he was telling me I had nowhere to stay for 5 days. It was no ones fault, but it kinda sucked. He felt bad though and said he would call some friends to see if I could stay with them and he would email me what he found out that afternoon.
So I didn't have the best start to my day. Camille had gotten back from leaving early to got see a Doctor in Annecy so we sat down for some luch. Camille attempted to make ravioli (I say attempted because it ended up being noodles all stuck together with cheese flavor), it wasn't too bad though. Then some random other food like a banana. Not the most organized lunch.
Then we got ready and picked up Alice to go to this place near a nearby lake. I'm not sure what the French name is (and I don't know if there is a name for it in English) but basically you climb of guide between trees on an obsticle course type thing. You have to wear a helmet and harness, so your strapped in the whole time, thus it is impossible to fall. But, its still a bit scary to be up reaaly high in a tree trying to plance on a piece of cord with only one other chord to hold onto. It was kinda scary at first, so I went slow. sometimes you had to walk across a log, or swing from log to log, or balance on chords. The other thing was to glide on a chord from tree to tree. Once I got rolling I was acutally pretty good. Alice called me queen of the trees. You use your core alot for balance, and you use alot of upper body strength. Good workout though. There were three courses you could do (green, blue, red, and black) each getting slightly higher and more difficult as you went. I did the first three but by the time I was done with red my heands really hurt(they weren't used to climbing across ropes and holding onto wores really tightly so you can move your feet to the next spot) so I didn't do the black one. I cheered for Camille and Alice from the ground as they did it. Overall it was a really fun time. They asked me if we have that in the states, but honestly I don't know. Do we?
We headed back to the house and then the three of us walked to the market. I needed to buy some food to eat on the train (since the train food is expensive) so we went in and I found what I needed (well more than I needed, but better safe than sorry). I also bought some cachews for us to munch on durring the movie. We walked back to the house and went to the livign room to watch a movie. We had cachews and mini plums for munchies. We watched 21 Las Vegas (the American title is just 21, the one with Jim Sturgess). I hadn't seen it. I liked it, it was pretty good, but very predictable.
After that Alcie had to leave and Canille and I had to get ready. So I grabbed some clothes and hoped in the shower ( I needed a shower post monkey workout). Margaux and her friend Laren arrived and we finished getting ready. Then we gathered everything we needed and hoped in the car.
You see we were headed to a Birthday Party!!! It was a party for thier friend Kevin (nicknamed Keke, at first I thought they said Kiki and was very confused). He actually turned 20 in January, but I guess he felt like having his party in July. We were kind of surprised when we arrived because there were a ton of people there, and most of them were his family. There weren't too many people our age. I know Margaux and I were very surprised. We met some people, said hellos and gave the French cheek kisses to everyone. (I'm still not used to the cheek kisses with strangers, but its a nice polite and friendly way to be greated, I like it) We got some drinks ( I don't know the name but its blanch vin avec sucre et citron, aka white wine with sugar and lemon). Then we sat around, talked, met and greeted other people, and ate off little apetizer plates that were going around like little pizzas. We hung out till it was time for dinner. Then we all got plates full of food, fresh wine (red for me) and sat down to eat. A very nice guy named Andrew sat down to join us. He spoke pretty good English because he had spent time in the US, the problem is he spent time in Texas. He had a horrible view of Americans. I had to explain to him that not all Americans were fat, stupid, and super religious. I told him he hdad to come visit a different part of the US. He said he would, he was really funny and fun to talk to.
He also told me that there was another American at the party saying that Montanans ate thier children. I went over to talk to the other American and confront him about his dissing of Montana. First of all he wasn't actually American, he was a Brit who had immigrated to New York. I know because he had a British accent, and said he had recently moved to New York. When I confronted him about saying things about Montana he said there were reports of settlers eating each other, and that settlers had gone to Montana. I said that although that may be true, we don't eat our children in Montana. He just kept repeating about the settlers and reports. He was very snobby and rude, I didn't like him at all. SO I left and went bck to talking to Anthony, the nice French guy.
We ate more food and drank more wine. Till I spilt red wine on my jacket (which is tan) Anthony took me inside to try to wash it off and put salt on it (apparently that is how the French get rid of red wine stains. We watched a few minutes of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney version) in French because the little kids were watching it. I sang along to God Help the Outcasts in English, the kids looked at me confused, but Anthony found it interesting. We talked about voice overs and he gave me one of Keke's coats to wear. When we got outside Keke commented on my nice coat. He had been to America too so we talked for a bit in English.
Then a jeep full of crazily dressed people (Keke's friends) including Coco (Camille's brother, thats his nickname) who was dressed in a grass skirt and coconut bra. There was a clown costume, a Spanish costume, a typical French costume, etc. They all looked very funny (I wish I had a picture, but I didn't have my camera). One of them had a guitar, and another had a flute so after arriving they handed out lyrics and began to sing a Birthday medly with lyrics special for Kevin. I sang along and followed the song sheets but I didn't know the songs of understand most of the words. I did join in when they sang the American version of Happy Birthday in French.
Then Anthony and I got dessert and talked about stuff. The desserts were really yummy. Then Anthony had to go because he worked in the morning (sad) so he said farewell and left. After that I chatted with Coco and some other people. Coco told me about a band Manos Negra that he wanted me to remind him to play for me the next day. Coco was giving me shit the whole night about being under 21 so I shouldn't drink wine. He's trouble that one.
A bit later an epic dance party began that of course ai had to prtake in. I danced with Coco's girlfriend, Camille, Margaux, and Coco. It was super fun. I danced and danced till the music stopped. Everyone was just dancign and having a good time.
Once the dancing died down and I sat down I got really tired. So Margaux asked it I wanted to go to the tent. Camille and Margaux had planned on not driving back so they brought a tent and sleeping bags. It was already really late at this point so they set up the tent in 2 seconds and I crawled in and got in a sleeping bag and fell asleep.
Two hours later the girls came back and decided we would all sleep at Camille's house. So I got out of the sleeping bag, we folded up the tent, got in the car and headed to Camille's. Once we got there we all just went to bed.
Crazy French and their Crazy Birthday Parties!
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