rencontres

Rencontres. Encounters. I had many of them last night. A bunch of the assistants in Gaillac and Albi and a handful of teachers got together to have a drink and meet everybody (why didn't we do this two and a half months ago?). People from everywhere really. Well not everywhere, because that would be impossible. I met a guy from Yemen named Ammar who is getting a masters in linguistics in Toulouse. He teaches Arabic. He taught me some sounds. The sounds are so hard in Arabic. Some of them come from places in my throat that I didn't even know were there. He convinced me that I successfully imitated a few of his throat-noises after several tries. I don't know why, but the people I know who speak Arabic seem to love nothing more than hearing me try to make Arabic sounds. And failing, nearly always. They smile kindly and make me do it again. And again. A French man (who was he anyway?) suddenly started speaking Arabic with Ammar, then in French, to be polite, asked him why he chose French to study, of all languages. Ammar told us, translated from Arabic to French and now to English that they say that French is la langue des oiseaux, the language of the birds. I'm not sure why anyone would say that because French doesn't really sound like birds to me. Except when Edith Piaf makes her voice sound all gutteral and rolls her 'r's. Piaf is argot for sparrow. So its not very original of me to say that I guess.

Later we were at a weird bar where the German girls couldn't understand why no one wanted to dance and the DJ told us when we asked if he could play some dubstep that dubstep is "kind of out" in France, but that he could play a little. Never did, and his terrible pop-techno mashups are really in? Is that it? Anyway a French boy named Benoit came with us. Benoit never brings friends, he always comes alone wearing black pants black shoes black t-shirt black suitcoat and a knowing smile. He and I aren't very acquainted yet. Standing next to me in the bar, he leaned over and said, toi, t'es francaise, non ? I smiled and said no. Putting his hand on mine and smiling, tu parles vachement bien le francais ! Merci, I said. Ah. Alors, tu viens d'ou ? South Carolina, I said. Oh, now it all makes sense, he says and begins speaking English to me. Very suave, Benoit. Like he didn't hear my accent. Like he didn't make the connection that he always sees me with the other Americans he has recently made the acquaintance of. At least he made me laugh.

Today I dragged Brent with me to Castres, which is a town that's not Albi. It was a beautiful day! Sunny and cold, my favorite. Castres is very very Christmasy right about now. That's why we went I guess. There was a big 'ol Christmas market that we wandered around. I ate a crepe with nutella inside, which was a good idea. Oddly, I don't really like nutella that much. Its too sweet and people eat it way too much here. And for breakfast. But today the crepe-to-nutella ratio was perfect.

Brent and I are always on the lookout for a good used bookstore. Used bookstores are called bouquineries. Albi is severely lacking in bouquineries, so we search elsewhere for them. Today we found a great one. It smelled kind of like pickles but I didn't mind. I bought three books. One: Babar Patissier, in which Babar bakes a birthday cake. Two: a novel called Stupeur et tremblements that Brent recommended. Three: La Premiere Gorgee de Biere et autres plaisirs miniscules : The first sip of beer and other small pleasures. Probably I'm most excited about this one. They are tiny vignettes about the littlest things that give pleasure to life. The smell of apples, the newspaper at breakfast, a day when you can almost eat outside.
Speaking of smells, in France when you walk outside after being inside at about 4:00 in the afternoon, it smells like croissants. Because everyone is thinking to themselves, hm, I'd really go for a croissant right about now. Or a chocolatine, which is what they call chocolate croissants here in the Tarn. So all the bakeries are pulling a ton of croissants out of the oven I suppose right around 4:00 because its l'heure du gouter. It annoys me that I can't use accents on this blog because it makes the font all wonky. Just imagine a little circonflexe carrot on top of that 'u' in gouter, ok? Otherwise I feel inauthentic.

This is a thing I saw in the past few minutes, and it's really worth five minutes of your time. Just goes to show that there have always been people with an excellent sense of humor.
.http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

The family I live with, I'm learning, thrives on laughter. I feel like we are joking always. Not an hour goes by without someone poking fun at someone else. All in good fun, of course.

Today I think for the first time since I got here, I had kind of a moment of panic about how little time I actually have here. All the times before when I would think about how much time I have left, I would think, seven months! Daunting! When in fact how could that be daunting? Such a minuscule amount of time. I will have days still to come where I will find it daunting, days when my students don't listen, when I can't explain to the lady at the bank that no, I don't owe them 70 euro, when I feel lonely. Its like in my new book, Babar patisser. All these things go wrong, like little Babar drops all the eggs on the ground, the milk boils over on the stove, the kids eat all the candied fruit that's supposed to go in it, etc. But he's still baking a cake, which is a pretty great thing to do I think.