Monday
Made some real progress on improving my sleep schedule! Just kidding, I woke up at 12. I was invited to a small get together with Louis (my neighbor’s son) and a few of his friends around 2pm. I got up, had some snacks, and went on over. I was the first to arrive, so I helped clean and get the basement ready for the other guests. In an effort to be more COVID safe, the get together was hosted in the basement and the rest of the family remained upstairs throughout the night. We decorated a small tree to make the space a bit more festive.
This was my first time hanging out with French people my age. At work, none of my coworkers are in their 20s and last summer all the other students were from countries outside of France. I was excited to see what a younger French gathering would be like because I am really only familiar with people my parents’ age or older.
It ended up being a lot of fun! We played board games, card games, and some drinking games at the end of the night. We ate snacks as we played and had raclettes midway through the evening. There was a small gift exchange after we had our raclettes. Some of the gifts included chocolates, books, and funny winter hats.
I struggled a bit more than usual to understand what everyone was saying. As with any other gathering of friends, people had inside jokes, spoke over each other, and spoke quickly. It was a struggle for me to hear and to process at the same pace that people were speaking. I found that I often heard and understood the first half of a sentence by the time the next one had already started. The kids also used a lot of words and phrases I just wasn’t familiar with. I knew that I wasn’t really familiar with slang, but dang I was proved correct in a big way. I deeply appreciated the people who stopped along the way to explain a joke or to ask comprehension questions. I felt included the entire night and it was great. I made sure to thank Louis for the fun night before I headed home to sleep.
Mary-Est-En-France 