French Lessons

I need to preface the central story of this post by explaining the duress of my travel from Oxford to Dinard, the airport close to my destination of Rennes, Bretagne.  I left in a taxi for the bus station in Oxford at around 8 or 9 AM, can no longer remember, then caught the 2 hour bus to the airport. I had plenty of time before my flight left at 3-ish, but, I had a very large problem to solve in that time. I was flying ryanair (my first ryanair experience) and I knew my suitcase was overweight. I had to try anyway, but I got sent away, told to get rid of 6....yes....6 kilograms of weight before it would be let on. And I knew they were intense because to my left and right women were taking out clothes when only a mere 1 kilogram overweight.

The big issue, of course, was that I decided to bring my guitar on this 3-week long trip. I have played it a lot, so it was a worth-while decision, but ryanair was only letting on one carry-on, so I couldn't easily stick 6 kilograms into my guitar case, and stuffing my backpack into my suitcase only made it heavier. After deliberating in a large bathroom stall for a while, I made some tough calls. For the hell of it, I put on 3 bras over the one I was wearing, another tank top, and decided that I could wear 3 sweaters under my jacket, and shove my other jacket through the handle of my guitar case and sneak it on. My computer, music, stationary, 3 books, pencil case, phone, camera, and IDs were carefully shoved into my guitar case. But my suitcase was still overweight. I finally decided to ditch a an old pair of boots whose heels are all worn down and I always slip in, and the other pair of boots whose heel is torn apart and they're just kind of shitty quality. I also got rid of some older tank tops that I just brought for like sleeping in, and a sweatshirt that's like meh.

This literally took me 2.5 hours of packing, weighing, taking one more thing out and one more thing until I got the 20 allowed kg and my guitar case to zip closed. I was partially worried about them allowing my guitar on the plane as well, since ryanair is a bitch, but no one ever said anything. I ended up running to board the plane because security took forever, and when I entered the plane itself, the lady took one look at my guitar and asked, "Do you have an extra ticket for that guitar??". to which I responded without hesitation "No, they said it was fine". She then was like, aight whatevs, and suggested I try to find a place in the overhead to put, because if there wasn't any, they would just lean it up against something in the back. She even came up to my seat to make sure it was fitting in safely. Surprisingly super super nice.

So. I arrive in Dinard at 6 P.M after being up since 7 and having the most stressful travel experience of my life. It was, in fact, very very difficult to part with those old boots. After a quick visit to the sea, Florent and I headed to his house to have a big dinner with his family, because it was the only night everyone would be home while I was there, and his sister's only night at home before going back to school. I was thrown, exhausted, into the realm of speaking only French, and the more I ate and drank, the sleepier I got.

(here is the real story)

We get into a discussion of the differences between life Europe and the States, and of course get to talking about food. I start to say how the yogurt here tastes so much better, and I try to explain that it could be because there are less preservatives in the yogurt than back home, since it doesn't keep as long as I'm used to. While I have regained much of my French in the past month, there are still tons of things for me to remember and to learn. Improvising, I said "Il n'y a pas beaucoup de préservatifs dan le yaourt", and was surprised to find the table silenced and a bit uncomfortable at this statement. After the still pause, Florent very gently asked me what exactly I was trying to say (preservatives). He then, still gently, explained that "préservatif" in French means "condom".

His family BURST out laughing. and I became instantly very red in the face.

It was a very long day. But I think they liked me?