Voulez-vous parler avec moi chez soir?

Normally I don't go out too much on the weekends, which is actually kind of a nice change from Chicago (although I always enjoy a night out dancing with good music!). However Thursday night was my last French class and afterwards we all went out for a drink. One girl proposed that we meet up again on Friday night for drinks as well.

The interesting thing about the group was that the girl, Sylvana, is from Bolivia, and the guy, Shekip, is from Kosovo. Neither of them speak any English whatsoever. I speak some Spanish, but now that I have learned French, when I try to go back to Spanish I get extremely confused and it is usually some sort of melange of all the foreign words I know. Example: "Yo no recuerdo, mais je pense que c'est ca" (I don't remember, but I think it's that). So we were really forced to communicate only in French, a situation I don't find myself in very often. Even at Pasha's there is usually someone who speaks English.

I was really tired on Friday and nothing is more difficult for me than trying to understand French when I am tired. If I zone out for like 30 seconds suddenly I have missed the entire conversation and then have to pretend that I understood (easily accomplished with a "oui" and nice smile, I generally find). Anyway, we met up at 8 at the gare and went to a little terrasse for drinks. We all had panache, which is beer with limonade (ok, see I just used the French word automatically there...I think a transformation is underway!). It's really quite nice for the summer, not as heavy as beer itself and very refreshing. Shekip also brought one of his friends who is from Chile. Finally my Professor (yes THAT one!) also joined us. Sylvana and I made sure that we sat on the opposite side of the table from Professor. So we had quite an international group! In fact, I told Sylvana and Shekip that they were the first people I had spoken with from Bolivia and the Balkan regions (respectively) and Sylvana told me that I was the first American she had spoken with.

So for 3 hours we spoke in nothing but French. Sylvana has a much better vocabulary and spoke a lot with Chilean friend. Some of the conversation was about Latin American politics (boring, sorry but when you can't understand everything, this is difficult). But mostly we talked about things we liked to do and food, things we used to do before we moved to Geneva, etc. It was actually pretty cool and very good practice for all of us. We also saw a fight that was absolutely ridiculous - about 8 guys, one guy got thrown into a window pane and it broke, then the guys picked up the pieces of glass and started swiping at each other, another guy was trying to hit people over the head with a bottle - this was happening like 15 feet from us!! Then all of the sudden it broke up and they all ran off. Bizarre. But it was a fun night, and in any case I now have some true French-only friends!

Today I woke up a little later than I wanted to but still ok. I have a lot of shopping to do to prepare for JUSTIN!! He is coming on Monday and will stay here for three months. Yeaaaah!!