and so this weekend I am in Nantes, not Bilboa, and after getting over my original disappointment, I realized several things:
- I only have one month left; time will go by fast enough without passing 20+ hours on a train by myself.
- I have a ridiculous amount of work to do between now and leaving.
- I have a lot left to see and do in Nantes before leaving.
It is divided up into three sections
-Vocabulary (where I'm writing down all the words I learn and look up)
-Grammar
-Plans and Goals
I've already been using it a lot. I also bought myself two grammar work books, intermediate and advanced, and have started working my way through the exercises. I think it will be really helpful.
Yesterday I somewhat crazily decided to venture out on my own for dinner, toute seule, because I had the hankering for a kabab.
It was raining but the streets seemed flooded by tourists; I heard lots of Arabic and German as I made my way down to the stand next to Place Royale. I bought my kabab, 4 euros, and walked around, trying to find a dry spot out of the Nantaise rain to enjoy it. I finally sat down on the steps of Saint Croix, just as it's deep bells rang the 8 o'clock.
And I felt alone, nearly, pedestrians walking by me, watching me watching them, and wondering if they're thinking I'm homeless. It is a homeless sort of hang out.
Then a few drunks stumbled into the court yard from the main road, and they looked at my stoop in what I perceived to be a territorial way, and so I skiddishly ceded them the stoop and began wandering the twisting streets of the Bouffay.
I found myself outside of the gelatto shop, and went inside and ordered an Inimitable - the best gelatto I've ever had - and found a table by a window and sat and pretended to preoccupy myself with whatever I could find in my purse. I love people watching, but doing so all alone and without any other sort of purpose seemed somehow pathetic to me, and so it was for pretense that I pulled out my journal and started rereading all the entries- all the while trying to take in as much of my surroundings as possible.
To my good fortune, five men walked in: four arabic, one french: one from New York, the others speaking rather hilariously sparse English and decidedly not from America.
They sat down at the table just next to me, and proceeded to talk in such a way that I KNEW they had no clue I could understand them. They were talking louder than anyone else in the shop.
Topics of conversation proceeded as follows:
- their bowel movements
- what internet chat sites they'd been on and whether or not they thought they were going to get lucky with a girl anytime soon
- their bowel movements
- whether or not the American was depressed about having to get married
- whether or not people were happier making their own decisions or whether it was best if their decisions were made for them (at this point it becomes clear to me that they are all Engineers. This topic revolved primarily around a description of a TED lecture and was quite interesting)
- their bowel movements
- internet chat rooms
It was terribly interesting to listen to, if at times a bit vulgar and raunchy; I kept debating about whether or not I should, at some point, let them know I could understand everything they where saying, but it seemed too late in the conversation to do so, me feeling already quite guilty really for being able to eavesdrop so easily.
I wandered around a bit more. I passed one sad SDF who had nubs for legs and was rocking back and forth and clapping his hands wildly and mumbling some sort of tune for change, and I was too taken aback by his appearance and the whole grotesque display to do anything except increase my pace as I passed him. I passed one friendly bum chatting it up with his potential benefactors as they stood in line at the ATM. I passed an endless amount of cigarette butts, still smoking on the wet sidewalks. I passed a dozen drunks, some singing loudly and out of key, happy despite the rain, others angrily cursing one another as they passed. I passed a million cafes, the clientele looking cheery and warm and completely oblivious to all the madness going on outside.
And then at some point Horace called, so I made my way across town to L'Huberloo, had a quick drink (a pint of Jupiler, pas mal) and then we all headed back to the Bouffay. At some point Hanna called, and we met up with her and her father Tim! who is here for the weekend.
The three of us walked around a bit, we ended up seeing three people fall flat - one a twenty something man who drunkenly ran into a construction barricade, knocking it over and creating a lot of racket, before stumbling three or four feet and falling on his face. His friends came just short of kicking him as he lay there, cursing him and yelling at him to get up before grabbing him and flinging him to his feet. The second was a middle-aged lady wearing high heels on the cobblestoned rode in front of the Passage Pomeray. She seemed to slide a yard or two before coming to a rest; Tim helped her to her feet and she limped off with her two friends. The third was a SDF pandering for change inside a restaurant. He fell down just as he was exiting, and the crowd waited a while as he lay motionless on the ground before two men grabbed him roughly and stood him on his feet before shoving him out of the door. Additionally, a couple on a bicycle rode past us quickly, the boy at the handlebars all the while saying, "No breaks no breaks no breaks," and before he was quite beyond our hearing we heard him yell "NO BREAKS" and then the distinct sound of a crash.
It was, and this is an understatement, a bit of a crazy Nantaise night.
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