What a week!!!!

Ok so its been a while since I've posted, but so much has happened in these past 7 days. I hope I can remember everything! So every Tuesday is conversation club at the IES building and this past Tuesday pretty much made my week. There were more French students this week which made it more fun. Most of them were guys. We did this group activity called speed dating where all the girls made a circle on the inside and the guys made a circle on the outside facing the girls. We each got a name tag with a random name(I was Jeanne) and a list of 20 questions to ask our dates. I had a blast!!! There were more girls than guys so some of the American girls volunteered to be guys. We had a 7 minute speed date with each person. There was this one French guy whose speed date name was Rogers and he said the only music he liked was high school musical and he had giraffes for pets. Of course he was joking, but I fell in love for those 7 minutes haha. I even got him to show me his dance moves. My dates with the American girls were hilarious because they tried to behave like guys. This one French guy kept on making fun of me because he couldn't understand my English and he thought I had a Texas accent. He said he didn't know anything about the different American accents so he was just guessing which was good because my accent is far from southern. I was surprised that he couldn't understand me though... so much for voice and diction class. One of the girls in the guy circle is a French girl who works at IES. We became instant bffs over our love for Gaspard Ulliel, Guillaime Canet, and Louis Garrel- hot french actors. We both want to go look for Guillame in Paris and pronounce our undying love to him haha not really but we do love his films immensely.
Dinners with my family are the highlight off my day. I love my host brothers, they embraced me into the family immediately. I want to keep them!!! haha I've never had brothers before and its very different. They pick on me all the time but its always in a cute or funny way. And they always help me with my homework. Thibaud basically goes through everything and is like "Wrong,Wrong, Wrong, Right!" and then he tells me how to fix my mistakes. I'm getting better at getting things right on the first try though. I'm learning things about boys through my experience living here:
1. Boys don't like to close the door when they go to the toilet
2. They also don't like to knock before entering the bathroom
3. They like to wrestle after dinner- they all attacked my host dad after dinner on Wednesday it was hilarious!
4. They wear the same sweater multiple days in a row- like 5 days- like cartoon characters who only have a different outfit if they go to a dance.
5. Nearly Naked push ups haha
6. Hugo Boss cologne is the way to go.
7. They are such clowns!!! But I love it
My goal for this week is to try to get at least two of my bros to participate in a random dance party because I really need one.
Ok so Thursday there was a strike all through out France. All university classes were canceled- except for mine of course. I had a class at the Fac at 5:30 but all public transportation was cut off downtown by 4:45 because the streets were filled with people. Literally everyone and their mother came downtown for the grève(strike). I'm not even sure what they were protesting, but it seemed like there were at lot of different grievances. People were standing in front of buses and on the tram tracks just talking or drinking. The A big van was playing spanish music ironically enough and people were dancing in the street. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. Parents even had their kids with them in strollers or just carrying them. French people are serious about their strikes. Some people started throwing firecrackers and I got a bit nervous that things might turn violent. I was also afraid I would have to walk home if the tram never started running again that night. I obviously missed my class. Apparently strikes happen in France all the time. Great! I ended up walking up three tram stops from the centre ville, and I caught a tram to the university. I made it to the second session of phonetiques lab so I don't have to do any catch up! yay for that. Friday, my friend Megan and I went to a hip hop class at the university. We ran into 4 other IES students there too ( two of them were totally wasted before the class- what geniuses) It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. All of the music was American rap, and we spent half the time stretching and doing weird things like standing on the tips of our toes and plié-ing which was tough and my toes felt broken the next day. Anyway we only got through 4 eights of dance moves and they weren't that cool. It was like a You Got Served class for beginners. It felt good to dance though!! After an hour and half of that,we went back to my house and had pizza. My host mom had pizza for me, and Megan ordered pizza at his place by my house. The lady at the register spent like 5 minutes trying to get Megan's debit card to work. The French aren't used to our cards because their black bar goes across the short side of the card and they just stick it in a scanner. The woman was talking to the debit card and blowing kisses at it to make it work (she even rubbed it against her chest and cried out to Obama) It was the most random and hilarious thing ever. Finally I said "Maybe try turning it around and swiping the other side" et Voila! It worked. The lady was really funny and we are totally going back there soon. Stephan, the oldest bro, hung out with us at dinner because the parents were having a huge dinner party in the living room. My host parents are so cool, they have parties all the time and they go out dancing. They are adorable, and I can really tell that they love each other. Ok so after dinner, some of my friends and I FINALLY went to La Maison for the first time!!! It was awesome!! Every room really is like a room in a house. I got to sit in the bathtub!!! I had one drink and tons of good conversation. I love my life here! And La Maison is my new favorite bar. On Saturday Madelyn and Megan and I went to our favorite sandwich place, Brioche Doree. A french lady who had studied abroad in America when she was young started talking to us. She was really nice and cool. It was her 10 year old daughter's birthday! She told us about her 17 year old daughter who doesn't know what she wants to do after high school and gave us the details about her American experience. She gave us some good tips on places to go in Nantes and sqid she'd make us burritos sometime when I mentioned that I miss those. We exchanged contact info and her daughter is going to come to conversation club tomorrow!!! After lunch, Megan and I made had a little adventure on our way to this mall called Atlantis. We saw Slumdog Millionaire dubbed in french. The movie was amazing and I actually understood most of it! After the movie we went to Ikea and got some chocolate and then we had dinner at a creperie. It was the best one I've been to soo far. Atlantis actually has decent restaurants! We didn't get to explore much of the mall before it closed so we,re going back next weekend before the Soldes end. We decided to go see another movie instead of going to a discotheque that night because tickets are only 3 €90 for students at Atlantis. They have two movie theaters there, so we tried the second one and saw De L'autre à cote du Lit. The French was much harder to understand for that film but the parts we did catch were hilarious!!! I had tons of fun that day. Sunday was chill. I hung out with the fam and played the piano with Thomas again. He is probably the funniest kid I've ever met! That evening I went to see a music concert courtesy of IES. It was a cellist playing two pieces by Bach. It was incredible! I wish I could play the cello! After the concert, I went to dinner with a few girls and watched superbowl commercials before going to bed. I finally finished reading Inkheart but all the movie theaters in Nantes only have the movie dubbed. I refuse to watch a dubbed movie if I can help it. Slumdog Millionare was an accident cause we forgot to check. Not many people realize it but so much gets lost in translation.

Anyway after this epic blog, my fingers need a break. Sorry for any grammatical errors. I didn't have time to check. Well, I have my first teaching experience with kids tomorrow!! Wish me luck!!!