Life Update...kinda sorta...

I should've written last week when I got back from the most incredible vacation ever in Spain/ the Cote d'Azur. Or when I skyped with my parents and saw a new background in the video screen, because they had moved houses now.

I should've written at any time during this week when my host mom's super cute grandkids came to visit for the week, from Israel, and how they were loud and spoke a mixture of French and Hebrew and and I loved them dearly. They left this morning.

Or I should've written when our program's director said it's ok, I don't have to continue 6 classes, 4 of which were at Sweet Briar, just in case the university strikes continue all semester. My two Parisian university classes have still been going on despite the strike, so it's highly unlikely they'll just stop right now.

Or I should've written about 'Orly's crazy adventures with international men, romantic and otherwise' (including the crazy Spanish guys in Valencia who gave Inci and I drinks, then ate half of our dinner, sang songs in Spanish about the facist gov't on the way to the free Franz Ferdinand concert, and somehow broke a pane of glass on the bus and magically disappeared like a puff of smoke).

The point is, I've been up to a LOT lately. Between vacation and schoolwork and life, my parents moving (and getting a DOG, which came with the new house... WTF?! We are not dog people...) and friends visiting, missing the sun and sangria of Spain, babysitting the host-grand-kids, partying all weekend, learning vulgar French phrases (I will explain in just a minute) and playing wine-pong and wine-flip-cup with French people, I have not had much time to relax, let alone post on the blog.

Other bloggers-- does this ever happen to you, where you have a small, ordinarily insignificant experience, but you think about it a lot, and you want to blog about it, to tell the world and be like "Hey world, I just had some great insight into the way the French society/language/culture/people/food/music/films work, and I think you should know about it to"? And then you sit down at your computer... and you can't think about what it is you wanted to say. Is this bloggers' block, or something?

update: Oh, well here's one thing-- I love how INCREDIBLY CHILL my host parents are. Unlike my real parents (who I love dearly but as we all know are super overprotective), mes parents d'accueil encourage me to go out, telling me "profite de ta vie" ("enjoy your life", basically). Last night was a perfect example. I had dinner with friends, and then came home around 9. My host dad goes "what? it's Saturday night! You're not staying in are you?" and I say "No no I'm going to a friend's party in an hour, I was just out to dinner and I'm relaxing for a bit." "Oh, good," he says "I was worried about you there for a moment. I was worried you weren't enjoying your life." Then I came home at 5:45 this morning, went to bed, and when I woke up around noon, my host mom just mildly commented "you came home really early in the morning, didn't you?" No tone of reprimand, no teasing even, just a straight-up comment. "Well, it was a really good party, and we just kinda waited for the metro to start up again" I responded. "Right right, tu as raison, bon, c'est super." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is SUPER to my host parents that I went to a really good party and saved money by waiting to take the metro home.

And this is why I love Paris.

Now, as promised, some great vulgar French phrases--

• If you want to say "he's a player/womanizer/ladies man"-- il est un chaud lapin-- literally, He is a hot rabbit.
• 'I haven't gotten laid in a while'= J'ai traverse le desert-- literally, I have traveled through the desert.
• 'I had a one night stand'--Je suis passe(e) a la casserole--literally, I have passed the casserole
• 'Go fuck yourself up the ass'--Va te faire enculer
• 'fuck buddy'--copain/copine a baise
  

I'll leave it at that, and post a real post soon. Just felt like a random, incoherent update today, that's all.