I've returned! Except instead of returning to Vernon I've rentrée'd to Rouen and it's even better than I remembered it. Aside from my stove breaking, fuses blowing, and not having internet for 2 weeks, it's been pretty seamless. To begin...
Grandpa! After P and A picked me up from the airport we went straight to Brittany for their grandfather's birthday party. It was lovely aside from my hideous cankles - ALWAYS WALK AROUND ON A LONG FLIGHT. Apparently there's a risk of embolisms occurring if you don't which can lead to fat hideous swollen ankles or blood clots to your heart. So walk around! The entire family was there and I met everyone and got ridiculously drunk. Like everyone. That in combination with jet lag made it a sleepy kind of drunk but wonderful nonetheless. P-baby got so drunk he almost forgot I was there and started walking out to the dinner carpools without me. La vie en rose! He also passed out on the grass in front of the charming french cottage restaurant where a wedding band was setting up for a reception later that evening. The party continued back at P-baby's gpa's house (which is beautiful, with tons of acreage, several barns, chicken coops, old rotting tractors and cars sitting around, several tool sheds and hills in Brittany) with alcohol Grandpa had made earlier - aka Moonshine. I also had some Courvoisier and a bottle of wine from.. wait for it.. 1985. Perfect. His dad and aunts and uncles also all took pictures of me hugging the bottle and looking gleeful we were born the same year.
After spending the weekend in Brittany the siblings and I drove home together to Vernon but not without the car dying in some blink of town because I had to pee. We had to push the car down the road and then P-baby was able to get it started. He went around the town and then came back and slowed down literally long enough for the rest of us to jump in and took off before it could die again. I didn't pee.
We got back, spent the night at his parents and then moved me in to Rouen the next day. The apartment is cozy and adorable with a coat of yellow paint for the interior. And a fabulous roof just outside our window where P-baby can smoke or we can sit outside and people watch. It's also sound insulated so heating is great and even though we're in the heart of downtown next to this great bar la Boite a Bière, the Joan of Arc church, and a chinese grocery store, I can never hear the drunkards stumbling home. It's a nice walk to the bus stop which dumps me off directly in front of my building at the university.
The big 2-6! The first week here I was going pretty much a mile a minute, setting up internet (yelling at Orange to set up internet) and phone service, furnishing the apartment with food and stepstools for roof access, lying to the Social Security office in order to get health insurance and going back and forth to the University setting up for classes to begin. I barely noticed that my birthday was coming up when P-baby insisted we go to Vernon for the weekend. To my surprise and sheer delight he threw a party for me at his house and invited a bunch of friends including making us all an amazing dinner and supplying a shit ton of beer and liquor. His precious sister made me 2 delicious cakes, one for the party that night and another the next day at lunch with their parents. In an otherwise wonderful night among people I haven't grown up with while speaking primarily my 2nd language, there was one moment that sucked. When people were still settling in to the garage (where we partied) I kept hearing this one guy saying "l'américaine" over and over, almost certainly talking about me right in front of me, which gets really annoying, especially on my birthday. It's just rude. Normally I would ignore it, but IT'S MY DAY so I sassed him and it backfired a bit. I said "Dude, I can hear you!" in french, which I guess doesn't work in french, so he was like, deadpan mind you, "So? Hear me." ....And A explained quietly (because everyone in the room had stopped moving or breathing it seemed like) that it's something you can say in English, an expression of sorts. I was THIS CLOSE to bursting into tears and blubbering in English but I held it together and instead made this weird laugh/guffaw noise to show that HEYYYY I was only joking! Whatever! And then someone else joined the party and we all moved on. I felt guilty though, like I momentarily ruined the party, so a few days later I confessed to P-baby, who had been out of the room at that moment. Instead of saying, well Lauren you jumped the gun and shouldn't have tried to chastise him, when clearly he was just being himself and didn't mean anything by it, he said My friend can be an asshole sometimes. He is always breaking balls like that, I heard him say l'americaine too and I told him, 'hey! quit breaking balls!'
I love P-baby. He says all the right things.
Also there was a GIANT spider in the garage that crawled right behind his sister and I and she started screaming and crying immediately it was so big, and I was looking for something to squish it with, when P-baby jumped up and smashed it with his BARE HAND! Savages these Frenchmen!! I love it.
School has officially started today and Emily is coming back to France this weekend to join me in our love for the R. brothers. It's been a little over 3 weeks and I'm finally feeling settled just like it was the most natural thing in the world to be in France with my wonderful boyfriend, teaching in an incredible job, living in an awesome and cheap apartment. Sometimes I remember to be sad about being so far away from home and everything amazing American, but mostly I'm happier than I think I've ever been.
I mean this is all pre Holidays when the lack of pumpkin pie is sure to cripple me (again), but I'm cautiously optimistic for the time being. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to eat the Breton cake my frenchman just made me.
