Birthday Party

I'm having a birthday party with friends tonight, but I had one with Mme Boudoube and Co. on Wednesday night. A student from Manchester she had hosted previously was coming through town with his friend, so they stayed here for a few days. They were both named Andrew, so Mme Boudoube took to calling the friend "Blondie." Their accents were so thick I understood them better in French than in English. "Blondie" had forgotten almost all his French, so the other Andrew, Aurélien and I had a fun time trying to translate the chaotic conversation.

Dinner was spectacular, as always. I should've taken pictures. The entrée was a tomato stuffed with couscous (couscous is my new favorite food) surrounded by grapefruit slices. The plat was pork, veggies and potatoes. And chocolate cake for dessert, of course. They had also bought me a bottle of champagne. And of course the English and the French are heavy drinkers, so they kept pouring me more wine and more champagne. I asked Andy how to say "dizzy" in French, and he didn't know. Aurélien piped up: "Oh, you mean when you've drunk a little but you're not drunk? You say, 'I am gay,' like if you were homosexual." Great.

They gave me a present -- a book called "Un peu de Paris," with cartoons/drawings about Paris and a wonderful note about the glories of being 20 from Magda (she's such a sweetheart). It's been really hot in Paris the past few days, and it's really uncomfortable because very few buildings are air-conditioned. So we'd turned on a fan by the time they brought out my cake, and the fan blew out my candles before I could.

It's hard to describe how fun it was because the pleasure in French dinners is the food and conversation. But let it suffice to say that I hope my party tonight is as fun as the one I had on Wednesday.