Week 2 recap: Another solid week in the books. I am finally beginning to become a true French driver. I get out of 1st gear with no problems, cut off other cars, pass people who are taking their sweet time, park on sidewalks, and instead of trying to find a parking spot in the city when picking someone up I simply stop in the middle of the road and turn on my hazards like a true French driver.
I was able to get a gym membership to “Body Peps” this week so that is where I will be spending most of my time during the week. It was a great feeling being in there and thinking “I am getting paid to do this right now. This is my job.” One thing that I still have yet to get used to is that every person that enters the gym greets every other person in the gym with a hand shake. It could be just me in the gym or there could be 20 other people and the most recent person to enter the gym will approach every single person and shake their hand. I was on the leg curl machine in the middle of doing the exercise when a guy approached me with his hand out. We just starred at each other. I was very confused and said “umm what’s up?” He said “Bonjour!!” and looked at me as if I was crazy. I finally figured it out and we shook hands then he walked away shaking his head in disgust haha.
Saturday night was a blast; a teammate invited me over for a “real French dinner” and to watch some of the college football games. There were 5 of us there and the food was delicious, then we started to drink a little and played a drinking game called “Hockey” (taught to me by Matt Munther) which was new to my French teammates but even so I quickly wound up being on the losing end most of the time. From there we went to some house party in the city. We didn’t get the memo that it was a costume party but we spotted some playboy bunny ears on one of the couches and sported those the rest of the evening. The owner of the house pulled me aside and asked if I was having a good time and I said “Yea, having a great time. Thanks for having us.” He then responded by saying, “Ok good. I was a little worried when you walked in because I was like,,, oh no, here are some Americans that don’t know any French and now I’m gonna have to babysit them.” I laughed and told him that he doesn’t have to worry about me.
After the house party things got very interesting. We walked over to a “Discotheque” (club) and a familiar voice yelled out “Steve what are you doing here?!” That familiar voice was my host dad Pierre, who was filling in for his brother as a bouncer at the club we were going to. I chatted with him for a few minutes then made my way to the dance floor; you can use your imagination of what happened over the next hour or so. Brian, the other American had a little bit too much of grandpas ol’cough medicine so I had to escort him out of the club. Our teammate Victor said that he would take him back to his place, so they left and Pierre asked if I wanted a ride home when he was done with work, and I of course said yes. Little did I know work as a bouncer in France doesn’t end till 5 AM when the club closes haha. So I became an honorary bouncer for the night. It was me, Pierre and 3 Albanian guys whom you would not want to cross in a dark alley. Every time there was a disturbance inside the club the 4 of them would rush in and tell me to not let anyone in until they got back. Each time I would have to stop a line of people by simply putting my hand out and a little nod of my head because my English wouldn’t get the point across. Then after a few minutes the 4 would come back carrying a guy who was getting a little to rowdy , simply toss him onto the sidewalk and tell him to keep it pushing. At one point Pierre and I were talking then all of a sudden he said step back behind the gate, because there was a loud commotion from across the street. I looked over and there were two huge bouncers from another bar/club chasing and kicking some kid that they had kicked out of their bar. I have never seen anything like that in my life, at one point he was crawling and they were still kicking him. They finally stopped and went back to their post as the guy got up and started yelling back at them, which was probably not the smartest thing to do but luckily for him they didn’t come back for seconds. If there is one thing I learned at that moment is that there are no rules, so you have to be very careful and cautious about what you are doing.
When the bar finally closed I helped them put up some chairs and what not then me, Pierre, all the bouncers, bartenders, waitresses and the owner of the club popped a few bottles of champagne and had chocolate cake (the best cake I ever had) to celebrate one of the waitresses birthday. After eating a bullshitting for an hour or so it was finally time to head home. We went out the back door and were greeted by a South France sunrise because it was 6:30 AM. We got home around 7 and I didn’t get out of my bed until 4 PM. Pierre then took me to get my car which I left at my teammates house. On the way back I thought I was following him but when we pulled up to a stoplight it was the same car but definitely not Pierre driving, so yet again I was lost in South France. I was able to back track to my teammate’s house then from my memory and a little help from Pierre I was able to navigate my way back to a familiar road and from there I found my way back to the house.
The end of my week just happened a few moments ago when I came downstairs to right this journal entry. The house I stay at has a motion censored alarm system so when I came downstairs from my room the alarm started beeping. I thought “no problem, I’ll just enter the code and that will be that.” 3-6-4-1…. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!! The loudest, most annoying alarm was set off by yours truly. I did a light jog upstairs and Tristan was in his door way, half asleep and very confused. I said, “You gotta come downstairs and shut this thing off.” He went down and entered the code to turn off the alarm. I asked what the code was and he said, “3-8-4-1”. Some would consider entering a wrong code as a failure but I was proud of myself for getting 3 of the 4 numbers correct. If I were able to do that with a lottery ticket, I think I would win some serious cash. Anywho that’s all I got for ya. Time for a PB&J and a tall glass of milk and then it’s off to count sheep.
Adventures of a Tall Man 