October 13th

Party party parTAY! The week is over, it is Saturday, thus time to party international style. Tonight is the Spanish themed party that is being held at the docks dormitory. This dorm isn't really a dorm, it's not an apartment complex either. It is several shipping crates that have been rigged in such a way that they are now used as living quarters. It looks like someone took a freight train and put its various cars into a drying rack. They're cool living quarters, but a bit narrow for my tastes. Anyhow, Kate and I bought proper ingredients for making delicious girly mixed drinks. The party, like any normal college one, was bring your own booze so we thought that we'd treat ourselves while controlling how much we were drinking. Parties are better spent buzzed rather than drunk, memories tend to be less fuzzy. Of course when we left it was raining, so typical. Something that was different though, our Irish friend Fergus was joining us. Fergus is a loner kind of guy, not extremely social, but this time he decided that he wanted to join the other international students. The group of us, Paula, Kate, Valerie, Fergus, and me, hopped from awning to awning in an effort to avoid the rain. When we finally arrived at the docks dorm the rain decided to stop. Thank you weather for being so considerate. The party itself was very impressive. All of the international students were there which made it that much more fun. Luckily the party took place in the stair well/ one of the rooms meaning we were under shelter. This was good since it started to rain again. I had fun switching between French and English with the various students. Cristiana, my Italian friend, took a bunch of pictures as usual. I posed with Demetrius while he was wearing the hipster hat for two reasons; first I wanted a picture of myself, and two he looks hilarious as a hipster. There was dancing and music, youtube music. This dorm has internet, jealousy, so the laptop that was being used as the turntable had access to youtube. Paula and I decided to introduce/usurp all the other students to the indie band Fun. We played their most famous hit, We are Young, since many of the other students had never heard it before. Not a surprise. If France is playing pop music from my high school years then I can't expect Romania or Latvia to know the latest top 100 hits list. We stayed at the party for a while, three hours I think, before heading out. Unfortunately for me, fortunately for the humor of everyone else, my friend Olivia was riding a bike. She asked me if I wanted to ride it, of course I said yes. Now Olivia is about 5'7", I'm 5'3". To cut to the chase, I fell off the bike instantly since I couldn't reach the pedals. I was laughing about it, good thing too because all my friends were laughing at me. Kate tried to hold the bike so that I could try to ride it, but as previously stated my feet didn't touch the pedals. The bike was a no-go. We returned home safely after that embarrassing moment. I'm trying to remind myself that humility is part of life. It's hard when Paula keeps saying, "remember that one time you tried to ride a bike and fell on your ass." It’s good to have friends.

P.S. I have been informed by my father that I need to, “stop going to so many European parties.” I realize that I have spent many week-ends out since I have arrived in France, almost of all of them in fact. For my best interest I am going to slow down, after all I am here to learn French not to socialize at parties. This doesn't mean I won’t go to any more parties, it just means that I will be more selective. Peace out.