"In Rugby, they just... BOUM!"

I got stood up tonight for an in-house Pizza Hut session, so I resigned myself to a can of ravioli at about 8:40. Mme. was so impressed by me doing actual cooking that I was hoping with all my heart nobody would be in the kitchen, as I didn't expect to buy groceries for another 24 hours. Instead, Mme. and one of her sons were in the kitchen, and, mortified, I prepared dinner using a stove and a pop-top. Mme B wanted her son to eat the dinner she made him, and he kept saying he wasn't hungry at the moment and would later (I noticed that he was apparently thirsty, as there was an empty glass bottle of beer or two on the table), and they involved me in a discussion on the merits of different types of foie, liver. Tonight's menu was apparently veal liver, and I mentioned that my Mom enjoys liver and onions from time to time, but nobody really eats veal anything aux Etats-Unis, and I myself had never had it, but would be willing to try it under the appropriate circumstances (this was a lie, because I knew I was safe from being offered any).

Maybe it was the foie veau, and maybe it was the biere, but Monsieur was quite excited to speak English to me, and we spent most of my dinner time discussing his 20 years in Ireland as a private French tutor. His English is, of course, excellent, and I think he was very eager to practice it after four months away, so he told me about the Irish people, switching back and forth between languages. I realized that if I listened to him speaking French, I could turn off my French-brain. It was a really uncanny feeling, because I could still understand what he was saying (by translating it rather than thinking French), but it was much, much more amusing, because I was able to see him like a non-speaking American person would be able to, with lots of hand gestures and faces and whistles that indicted 'non.'

M. invited me to watch rugby with him when I was done eating, and I had the best time. Rugby is pretty interesting, and easy to catch on to. This particular game was between the Welsh and the English, and between swallows of biere and cigarettes, he would call the English "baz-tarts" with an Irish-French accent. This amused me greatly. He told me that in the 6-nation professional rugby league, everybody hates the English (because, he said, of all the wars. I did not mention the most recent ones wherein the English were big winners), and that he wasn't sure why English people love France so much but hate the French the way they do (a valid point). He said that the French are too occupied with other things to worry about what the English are up to (like worrying about what Americans are up to). He then, and this amused me greatly in my mind, told me how the French had lost only one New-World battle to the English, the one at Montreal, and if it hadn't been for that, Americans would all be speaking French today. "You would have fought the French for the Revolution! Not the English!" and then asked, rather pointedly, who came to America's aid during our Revolution. Being the International Studies Major I am, I mentioned what a big fan I am of Monsieur LaFayette, Revolutionary hero, and did not mention that the French had pretty much waited until the tides were turning in the colonies' favor to lend a hand.

I also learned that American football is for more delicate men (here, Monsieur made a priceless face by sucking in his cheeks and fluttering his eyelashes) because they wear pads, helmets, and don't get all bloody. I had to agree that maybe there was less risk, but secretly I thought that American football looks a lot scarier. He invited me to watch the Scotland-France game tomorrow on the tele if I'm going to be at home, and I believe I will, as I have a vested genealogical interest in the match. Also, M. Bouhet (1/5) is very nice and supremely entertaining. I'm going to have to figure out a way to capture his antics on film.