Dude I'm tired. Seriously.
Last night I managed to coax a small but moderately willing troup of "youth" from the world's least friendly Youth Hostel to come out for a drink with me into town. It was cool, and I even met a girl that I'd spoken to at the Hostel in Montpellier (I'm starting to feel like I'm on a real backpacker's drag!) but the hostel closes at two so a lot of people lamed out and went home early.
Me and this one girl were blind with desire to find some late night fun so we decided to stay out past the curfew (shock!) and be locked out of the hostel for the night. This is not as serious as it sounds because the place opens again at five so we just had to make sure we could occupy ourselves till then.
Sadly the girl, as often happens with girls who seem totally normal at first meeting, turned out to be a mentalist and got super-grumpy about five minutes after we arrived at this -supercool- little club on the outskirts of town. It was just the sort of place I always like to think I'll find but never do: small, full of twenty-somthing locals, wildly and nuttily decorated and playing reasonable non-shit house music. I was in heaven. The chiquita I was with, however, looked like she'd just stepped out of a salon... OF MISERY! So I tried to cajole her into having a good time but it was clearly going nowhere.
We did successfully stay out till late enough to get in though, and now I'm suffering the consequences of a late night and a few too many rum and cokes.
All perfect preparation for what I've just done. I was wandering aimlessly about the streets (see most of the previous days of my life for similar activities) when I stumbled upon the Alliance Francaise, a world-wide group of zealots who are trying to spread the good name of GCSE-style French lessons across the globe. Needless to say I went in to check it out. Memories of French at Coleridge were still fresh in my mind like a rogue Tango in a Orangina despenser and I just had to take a swig.
The woman seemed remarkably keen to sign me up and was full of "what about next Monday? No? What about the Monday after that?" kind of talk familiar to desparate bachelors the globe over. Still, I did a test which was horribly reminiscent of my GCSE French exam where I forgot what the verb "to Have" was and had to just blather on about fruit and veg. It started easy and got really nasty by the end.
Stuff like this (all in French of course) -
Complete this sentence using the correct verbs and tenses:
If Julie had been born in the XVth Century ___________
If Pierre hadn't been two minutes late for the cinema ____________
etc etc.
Tough. Needless to say I bottled everything after about question 5 and just wrote pathetic excuses in French about how it was all too difficult.
Well, they're going to email me the results of my test at some point so we'll see what happens.
All this Alliance Francaise stuff and the crusade-like finding of nightlife is all really just to give me something to anchor me to this place. At the moment I still feel like I'm floating a bit. I heard this morning from my super-cool Canadian friend that she's going to stay in Toulouse for this year, and I'm thinking she's got a point. Still, Toulouse is relatively small and Bordeaux definitely has size on its side if nothing else. I'm going to try and find a choir. I think the town that can offer me the best choir is the one I'll marry.
Finding it is going to be tough though.
Rob
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