07 May 2008

J'ai rêvé

"I dreamed"....

No, really, I did. It was a couple nights ago. And then I woke up in the middle of the night and the first thought that popped into my head was: "Où sont les baleines?"
"Where are the whales?"

At least it was in French, right? Last night I had a dream that Mark and I were trecking through a forest singing pirate songs and trying to find Jessica. This makes perfect sense because in London Mark and I walked through Hyde Park speaking pirate (oh, yes, it's so totally possible) and because we were talking yesterday about going up to the forest in north-east rennes and seeing if we can hike in it. And also we just love Jessica. She's so cool.

Her parents were here over our break and while Jess was talking with her mum she happened to mention how she missed one of her school hoodies and how it's strange to never get any vitamines here. So what did she receive in the mail today? A nice little box full of sweatshirt and vitamines and a postcard with a photo of her favorite mountain in Washington. It was one of those moments when on the outside you're like, "Aw, that's so sweet, thanks mom!" and you're also thinking on the inside,"How in the world will I fit this bottle in my luggage if I don't use all the pills? It's 20°C outside! I don't need this! Where will I put it?"

Last night we went to the fest noz. It was super cool. I tried to take pictures but the lighting was horrible, so they didn't come out very well. I'll try to pool pictures with Johanna and Jessica to see if something visible can be worked out. Of course, you won't be seeing these pictures for at least a month, I'm guessing, haha.

Breton dancing is really easy. You know how there's country line dancing? This is celtique circle dancing. It was super easy, especially at first. You either hold arms or pinkies, although generally pinkies (which the French call "petit doigt"- "little finger") and then someone starts dancing and you desperately try to lift your feet up and down in time to theirs. This is the moment in your sad little university life when you realise that you are the only person left in the world who can count to 4 in French.

I can't even begin to describe, without tons of handmotions, what it was to watch a giant circle of about 100 people try to spin eachother, walk around, and go in and out without losing people in the fray. Oh, and people were lost. There was one part of a dance where the girls walked towards the center of the circle and then back in 8 counts, and then the boys walked out and back, but on reentering the circle they took up the next girl down, making sure that everyone switched partners every time. The biggest problem with this is that some people switched too far, or not far enough, and every once in a while someone would be left standing slightly out of the circle from people, watching the couples on either side of them twirling.

The best part about the party was that there was no ventilation in the room. None. There were easily over a hundred people either standing or dancing and spinning and running all over the room. You could smell them, each and every one of them. It was even more amazing when I went outside to cool down a little, and then went back inside to dance again. It was like walking into a sauna full of hockey and football gear. Not the athletes, just the gear. Stinky. And then when you were dancing when you had to hold people's hands, you had to hold even tighter because everyone was whiping their sweaty faces with their palms. Everyone's faces were glistening in the dim light, hair was falling out of pony tails, guys had lines of sweat running down their spines...

And then there were people like Mark, who had to be tricked/dragged to the dance. He danced twice: once the first time Sophia came out, and the second time when a French girl came up to shake his hand, and Mark, forgetting that the French don't do that, grasped it. She pulled him up and dragged him to the circle. The event left us girls dumbfounded by the wall. We were all on break, and had been trying to convince Mark to come with us. And to think, all it took was a hippie Bretonne French girl! Oh, the look on his face. Not happy, haha...not happy at all!

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