A Night on the Town!

So the family that I live with has a daughter who is 19, Ludivine. She’s pretty nice, and I like her. I had hoped we would be able to hang out more so that I’d get to know a young French person. But because she just finished her school exams and therefore the school year (as did most European students), we don’t see much of each other. I’m gone all day at class, and she’s gone all evening with her friends. My evenings are spent reading, doing homework, eating dinner, and going to bed early since I wake up at the butt crack of dawn to run (well, actually, here dawn is at about 5 in the morning, but you get the idea). I don’t really go out and do stuff on weeknights (partially because of the aforementioned reason and partially due to the fact that my family doesn’t live right in the city where all my classmates live; I also reserve going out for the weekends when we travel). But, still, I secretly hoped that Ludivine would invite me to go out with her and her friends sometime.

Well, one night at dinner last week when Ludivine was absent again, M. and Mme. Gendre (the parents of the family that I live with) mentioned that I hadn’t gone out at night with my friends and asked why. I didn’t have a good answer. I tried to tell them that some of the kids in my group from Tech are friends with each other but not with the whole group, so everyone doesn’t hang out together (the best way I could think to explain in French the weird “clique” thing going on in our group of only 13 to begin with). They seemed to understand this, but I think it may have been interpreted as, “Veronica is kind of a loser with no friends, and surely that’s the reason she never goes out and not because she wakes up way too early in the morning.” Because the next night after dinner Ludivine invited me to go out to a bar with her and her friends. Her mother stood by saying things like, “Oh I think it’s such a good idea. She is 19 and you are 20. You will be able to know some French kids. It’s a great idea.” After repeating this about 5 times, I had to chuckle a little in my head, because I couldn’t help thinking, “You put her up to this. You asked her to invite me out because I never go out.” It was handled with the kind of social grace only a mother possesses. Nonetheless, I was excited to be invited out, mother’s orders or otherwise.

So the next night, I borrowed one of their bikes and rode into town to a bar called Chez Ton Ton. (By the way, it’s kinda fun to ride a bike into town like that to meet people or do something; I took one to church this weekend as well. I’d ask to take one to school if I didn’t think—excuse me—know that I would die in the traffic of people and cars.) Anyways, Ludivine waved me down, I locked up the bike, and then I was introduced to her friends. The first thing she asked me was what I wanted to drink. She offered beer (about half the size of an American beer, by the way, so not very impressive when someone says they’ve had several beers), wine, and some weird stuff in a cup. She said cocktails were really expensive and wine and beer is pretty cheap (which I discovered in Nice is very true). So, being kind of ignorant about alcoholic beverages in general (my usual request would be “something that tastes good”, and I offer my deepest apologies to my Irish roots), I inquired about the weird stuff in a cup. She told me the name, but I didn’t recognize it. She let me try it. It had a very strong, familiar, disgusting taste that I couldn’t quite place (and still can’t). A very large portion of my brain said, “You know this tastes disgusting. Don’t request this as your drink.” A very small portion of my brain said, “Hmm. Weird. Maybe it gets better. Let’s try it.” I would like to go on record by saying that in almost every life situation, that very large (logical) portion of my brain wins. But for some reason, that night, it forfeited completely to that small portion. So I ordered this disgusting drink. It never got better. In fact, on my empty stomach, it was all that I was burping up, making it impossible to ignore. So I hurried next door and bought a sandwich, telling them that I hadn’t eaten dinner yet (the truth).

Soon after, we moved from an outside table to an inside table. There’s a rumor going around that everybody in France smokes. I am here to confirm said rumor. Especially in bars while people are drinking. When we were outside, I was fine. But moving inside where the smoke wasn’t circulating very well bothered me. I had the following conversations with one of Ludivine’s friends (all of whom were smoking and apparently only do so when they go out):
Friend: You don’t smoke?
Me: No.
Friend: Have you ever smoked?
Me: No.
Friend: Never even tried it?
Me: No.
Friend: What?!
I think this is the only time in my life (and will continue to be the only time) that I actually felt kind of embarrassed by telling someone this. I was clearly out of place by not smoking. I sort of tried to explain that I don’t even like the smell, that I’m an athlete, etc, but I gave up on that pretty quickly and just dropped it.

Eventually, we left the bar to go to a party at one of their classmate’s apartment. I’m not much of a party person myself. I’ve never been able to fit comfortably into such a scene. So I was kind of relieved when we got to the party, and I saw that it was a pretty small get-together. Not too loud. Everyone seemed to know each other. But upon arrival, the girls that I came with quickly dispersed to talk to other people, leaving me to realize that I didn’t know anybody, and, to make matters worse, didn’t speak French very well. So what do I do? Stand around awkwardly wishing I could find a seat where I could sit awkwardly (since sitting a more comfortable and less obvious way to hang around awkwardly). Eventually a space opened up on the couch, so I took it.

Finally, people had had enough to drink that it seemed okay to go talk to the random girl sitting on the couch. So I actually did get to have a few conversations with people. One guy found out that I was from Atlanta and got really excited. He kept telling me (very loudly) that he wants to go to Atlanta because it’s the “Dirty South” and all kinds of rappers are from Atlanta. He also told me that he loves black people, except he didn’t call them black people (please make an inference here). I told him that if he goes to Atlanta, he can’t call them that. He said, “But I love them.” I told him it didn’t matter, he can’t say that when he’s in the US. But he was too drunk to care all that much.

Eventually a neighbor showed up with bat (though I didn’t actually see this happen) and told us we were being too loud, so everyone started to leave. I chose this as my time to go ahead and head home, as I still had to get up at the butt crack of dawn the next day. I’m still not sure if I enjoyed myself that evening. It was interesting, and I’m glad I got to do it. If she invites me out again, I’ll probably go. Of course, I don’t think I was real fun company, so I don’t know that she’ll invite me to go out again….