guilt and shame and chocolate and swear words

Happy Halloween !

So this week has been a melange of painful activities cleverly disguised as cultural immersion. Although somehow I feel like I could have gotten the crap beat out of me in basketball in the US too. For the first time, I went to play some intramural basketball earlier this week. Tuesday was fine – all girls, quality, but no one in phenomenal shape. There also wasn’t much of a language barrier since “shoot” has been pretty solidified into the French language. Although, the man who runs it told me I should come back the next day to play with the “mixte” (boys and girls). Having given a significant portion of my life to playing and watching basketball – I should have known that returning was a very poor decision. The first guy who showed up was a solid 6’6. The gym echoed with the sounds of dunking all night. Everyone else had fairly equal advantage. But they were all very nice. I also found that I will be able to judge the progress of my language when my sports and reactive exclamations (read: swear words) are no longer in English.

Speaking of vulgar words, the other day we went “adolescent with a horrible vocabulary” fishing in Place de la Liberte. We chose well. Six young men between the ages of 16 and 18. Needless to say, they were a little suspicious at our request but, together, they rose to the occasion quite beautifully. They started out a little weak. They offered “con”, which is basically idiot or jerk. We had to give them a little nudge as in “wow. We know you know something worse than that.” By the end we had quite a list accompanied by lots of “wait, are you sure you want this one?? This one is really bad.” Lay it on me. Just cut down a significant gap of vocabulary. They bus is a whole new world…

Unfortunately, I was not able to utilise my new wealth of knowledge for the interview that I did for the campus radio on how it is living in Dijon/France as a foreign student. I think it went pretty well, I didn’t sound too stupid, but it’s going to be aired Monday. Don’t know if I want to hear it. For those of the braver sort, yesterday, the tv channel France 3 came to the CIEF to interview Americans about the upcoming elections. I sat that one out. Liz did it and she indicated to me outside so the news people would ask me but Janine, a friendly (and very tall) German, was kind enough to hide me. We are having awesome luck with Germans in this country.

In other news, I recently managed to carve out my place in chocolate hell. See as follows: Last night we got talking about chocolate at the dinner table because there is this chocolatier in the center of town that is, apparently, epic. I just asked her if it was as good as everyone says (which in retrospect was silly since Liz bought something there a few weeks ago that was laced with gold). Mireille said “yes” and I asked her if she was a big chocolate fan and had preferences. She said she liked more of the milk chocolate variety. It had just so happened that my mother had sent me a little Halloween care package with Hershey’s chocolate. I gave Mireille a piece saying that a lot of people feel strongly about it not being good chocolate etc etc. For the record I did not give any indication that this was especially quality chocolate!! So a little while later when she offered me some chocolate from this chocolatier… I could not accept it in good faith and justice but I could not explain to her that the two were not equal!! I had only given it to her because she indicated that she and I shared similar taste in chocolate! I know that a lot of people knock hersheys but it’s not my fault that I like my chocolate like I like the depiction of women in American history: weak and second class.

The guy in front of me in wearing a Yankees hat. What the hell.