American Sports in France

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This was a fun week! I've been sick, so that wasn't too much fun, but everything else was!!

It was a really good week for weather, so that rocked. On Wednesday, Melting Potes (the group that helps international students with everything) had a party at a club near the train station. It was a lot of fun - the club was really packed and the music was really good! It was a good thing I didn't have class on Thursday because we had to walk home and didn't get back until about 5 a.m.! Thursday night I went out to an English pub with some people from class - it was fun to get to know some new people! Friday I decided to stay in and attempt to get over my cold - went to bed at 10:30, which is kind of lame, but oh well 😊 Saturday I went to a rugby match with friends. It was really fun - I don't really know the rules for rugby, but it was still fun to watch! The stadium is outdoors so it got quite cold once the sun went down - but it was only 5 euros to go, so I'll go again, but probably wait until it's a little warmer! After the rugby match, we went back to DomoFrance, the dormatory at the school, to hang out for a little bit with a lot of the other exchange students. Then we went to a club that was supposed to play reggae music. They actually played American hip-hop and it was a blast!! When we got there, there were only 10 other people in the club, but after about 1/2 an hour, the place got full - it was really similar to an American club, except the people couldn't dance as well 😊 This is going to sound kind of bad, but we were also the only people there that weren't Black, so that was quite the experience. The girls were glad we had really nice guys with us that didn't mind telling the creepy guys to stop dancing with us! Sunday Teresa and I went to the open-air market, but we got there as everything was closing down, so we weren't able to get any fruits and vegies, but we got these great cazone-type things. Then we planned our February trip (which isn't going to cost much!). We then went to someone's apartment for a crepe party - we pretty much just hung out and ate WAY too many crepes! Then we split off (I went home to take a nap) then met up at DomoFrance to watch the Super Bowl. We were planning on going to a bar, but we found out the bar would still close at 2, so we'd miss part of the game. I was bummed that the Pats lost, but it was a lot of fun - it ended at 4 a.m.!!

Watching the Super Bowl here was quite the experience - there were barely any commercials and the commentators were terrible! They obviously spoke French, so I couldn't understand a good chunk of what they were talking about, but they talked about soccer a lot...they also had the camera on the commentators too much - there were times when we would miss some of the game because they were showing the commentators. It was also interesting to try and explain some of the rules to the others who haven't seen an American football game before - but I think everyone else enjoyed it!!

The trip I'm taking at the end of February will be to Spain and Portugal. We'll be flying from Paris to Madrid, spending the weekend there, then flying to Porto, Portugal. We will then take a train to Lisbon and maybe Southern Portugal. We decided to use couchsurfing.com, a site where you find people who will let you stay at their house, for free! We will save a lot of money that way. The best part is, the people on the site are checked to make sure they're not mass murderers or something 😊 We found a guy in Madrid that we'll hopefully be able to stay with - he's younger so we're hoping he'd be willing to show us around Madrid!

The heating in the school isn't working so we don't have class today or tomorrow, so it's a nice extended weekend 😊

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