France Blog 5 -- BEM

Honestly its been lonely here.  I have spoken to many faces and forms, mostly centered on commerce.  “I would like a coffee please.”  “Thank you very much.”  “How much is this?”  “Two baguettes, please.”  “I think its your turn”  “Have a good day.”  “I apologize, but I think I just accidentally re-started your laundry.”  But rarely any hearts.  When Jeremy is at school I always make it a point to go out-of-doors and see the world, explore, watch, brush myself with a little bit of humanity.  My building is empty; all the other girls are at school too. I have plenty to do.  I clean the little apartment, sleep a few minutes extra, make coffee for Jeremy in the morning, do some internet work for the coffeehouse, chat with people on facebook, spend some time writing for myself and the blog, eat up a book, think about writing wedding thank-you notes, and deeply explore the city.

 

I was hoping to travel to my old YWAM bases sooner than later, but the expense hasn’t been worth it yet, until we get our Eurail passes.   Our evenings have been nice, and usually consist of walks and grocery shopping, but honestly, I need more people. I make a living off of surrounding myself with people.  The job of a barista (and even more: coffeehouse owner) is people-driven. There is always time to share a little bit of life over a latte transaction.  I’m used to diving right in to conversations, deep or simple, revealing or not.  I knew before that I was an extrovert; I feel the most alive when my heart is connected daily with others. My experience here enforces everything.

 

Although I feel comfortable enough with my French, I tend to not use it unnecessarily. I’m slow, and frankly people don’t care enough at an initial encounter to wade around my language insecurities and speed.   I know Jeremy’s been worried.  Although we are good for each other, we are never enough for each other; a marriage isn’t meant to be an island.  Jeremy loves people, but he fulfills his quota for the day during his 9-11 hours at school.  I think sometimes he would prefer alone time with me. When he gets home I’m crazy biting at the bit to speak with SOMEONE…find out how a day went, hear someone else’s thoughts on life and vacuuming and sunsets and mosquitoes and car noises and Iraq and dancing and growing tomatoes and how babies learn to crawl and eBay and German castles and rollerskating. I try not to overwhelm Jeremy with questions and WORDS, and he in turn tries to not be too quiet and home-bound.

 

He had asked me earlier what he could do to make life easier for me, while I’m here.  I thought that was an odd question, considering that he is the one with the schedule and an amount of homework (not much so far, but enough to keep him at school a few extra hours).  But he noticed my restlessness.  “I don’t know…make a date for us to hang out with someone from your class, maybe?”

 

So he signed us up for a BEM outing. 

 

The school hosts a get-together of some sort almost every week.  This week they held an ‘Apartathon.’  We all met together at one of the larger squares. “Don’t be late!!!” they said.  We all knew that meant we wouldn’t be leaving at least 30minutes after the deadline (thanks to The French Timing System).  There were approximately 150 of us, international students included.  We were all twirling around the square, speaking in French, English, Mandarin, German, to whoever might be near.  All of these voices, all of these potential friends! I gladly welcomed the noise and clatter.

 

They divided us up into 5 different groups, and after we said goodbye to Bernard, an affable German guy from Jeremy’s class who spent some time in Woodinville, WA (here pronounced “Voodenville”) in highschool , were lead through the town to one of the five apartments.  At the entrance to each apartment they gathered up our not-so-tiny hyper group, gave us a lecture about noise in the stairwell, and sent the load of us up extremely-echoey stairs.  I don’t think silence was an option. 

 

A different campus club hosted each apartment.  They had placed people strategically throughout the room so that at some point in the hour that we were at each apartment we would indefinitely run into a club-member, and get the club run-down. “Its 15 euros” bla bla bla “Every Tuesday” bla bla bla “Only for students”  bla bla bla “You have a cute American accent” bla “whoah you’re MARRIED?!  You two are sooo young!” over and over.  But I didn’t mind a slight bit of repetition; I was in conversation!

 

I hung out at first with the Chinese gals I met the week before.  They are incredibly stylish, still slightly shy, and were wonderful companions.   They tend to hang out mostly amongst themselves because of the language barrier, but I found my way in to their little group.  I was full of patience because I, too, was an outsider amid the students.

 

They had charged an admission fee to join the rowdy Apartathon, and in turn provided us with snacks and drinks at each cozy abode. Between apartments we got an accidental tour of the city in the late-nights.  We weren’t the only ones up at the late hours.  The social scene of most European cities belongs to the evenings.  Dinner isn’t consumed until 8pm at the earliest,  usually lasts till 10pm, and sleep isn’t mentioned even for  another few hours.  Cafés and pubs are a usual meeting-place. I have come to enjoy the feeling of expected social-ness in everyday minutes.

 

I reveled in every conversation. Jeremy brought me around to introduce me to his friends (a kind of ‘coming out’ for us here). I polished up my trusty rusty French. I mingled with an extroverted Irish man, sweet sultry French gals, overexuberant English pretties, a lanky lad from Montreal, smooth-talking French guys, a Russian gal who had to change her name because no one can pronounce it here, a young cheek-pinchable reserved Irish boy, an English-speaking French man with a penchant for extreme sports, a French gal who spent some time in the South in the States and shared her negative experiences working for an overly-conservative Christian camp, and many other elbow-bumping spur-of-the-moment conversations and meetings.  Jeremy’s experiences were very similar to mine, except involving more English.

 

We left for home, happy drunk off of human interaction, much earlier than the rest of our crew. However, other apartment parties were one-by-one shut down by the police because of ‘noise.’ It was probably neighbors who heard us talking in the stairwells.