November 5, 2002 Spreading le Wa with Steve
Sorry I've been such a slacker at writing. They've got us so busy here I hardly have time to eat. Add in all the social activities and I hardly have time to sleep either. I am slowly adjusting to be able to function on just four or five hours of sleep. So here is a month's worth of happenings. And even further below are some PHOTOS! Just two, but it's a start.
By the way, last time I mentioned my friend Jeff's website similar to this one, but about Japan. I didn't have the right link, but now I do. Click here to check it out.
Also I got a mobile phone here. You can call me anytime at (+33) 6-78-76-17-97.
So how's it going here? Actually, very well. I'm having a whole lot of fun with a lot of cool girls and guys. About 150 or so of us all live in the same building (the "Residence Expansiel", as it's known), and it's turned into a sort of village. I never lived on a campus before so I am enjoying all the impromptu get-togethers, the borrowing of everybody's stuff, the complaining, the gossip, late nights playing cards, and the room hopping when you're not studying (but should be). Like any village worth its salt, the gossip mill is in full swing, and there's all kinds of talk floating around about who's doing what, or who's hitting on who, and who heard what through the walls late last night. Recently a few of us invented a fake person (named Steve) and started spreading rumors about him. Now half the program knows who Steve is, but I don't think everyone knows he really doesn't exist. Steve was born only about a week ago, but already he's developing quite a personality. For one, he's slept with many of the girls - it seems like a different one each night - which is incredible considering the male to female ratio here. And also because he just got here a week ago! For some reason it turns out he's from Alaska (not sure how that came about) and he has a lesbian sister named Lisa, who has also been seen making her rounds on campus. Quite a lot of people are interested in meeting Lisa. Hell, I am too. Steve is already being accused of murder, they say he buried the body in the woods near the campus. I didn't hear who the victim was. His second initial is "W" (like the president) in order to not confuse him with Steve H., who is a real live person from Canada living in the building. Steve is convenient to have around because he gets blamed for all the noise at night.
One perk of being here in this village is that everyone brought all their MP3 music files with them and have put them in their shared folders on the internal network. One guy has 5000 songs, another guy has 4000, and several others have files numbering in the low thousands. This means I have my choice of literally thousands of songs and albums to copy onto CDs. I'm going to walk away from here with the most amazing selection of music, and all of it free.
And one of the best things about this school here is its convenient location just ten minutes from France. I don't feel at all that I live in France. France is where I go on the weekends, and I have been there a few times but not nearly as much as I'd like to. I think I will walk away from sixteen months here without speaking proper French because there is hardly ever an occasion when I have to use it. I'm trying to remedy this situation by going to France more often but looking at my schedule (and budget) the odds are stacked against spending more time in France and less time on campus.
I joined a lot of activities here. For one I'm in the rock climbing (wall climbing) club. This is something I've always wanted to do, and it's a blast. There is a climbing wall right on campus for us to use. On my second day a Brazilian girl name Ale who must weigh about one third my weight was my spotter holding the rope on the ground. I slipped and fell off the wall from pretty far up, which caused her to fly straight up like the weights in a grandfather clock. The two of us ended up being suspended in mid-air halfway up the wall. It looked pretty funny. Just tonight I went and climbed, and I'm getting better every time.
I am also in the bicycle club, which I think only three or four of the members actually own bicycles. The rest of the members just want to hang out in the club and have fun.
I also volunteered to be a bartender at the bar located right in the Residence Expansiel. The biggest obstacle I have after a night of drinks is a single flight of stairs. I don't even have to go outside. I mentioned before how the place we eat at on campus is called "The Restaurant", so it goes without saying that the place we drink at is just called "The Bar". The Bar has a baby grand piano in it, and therefore everyone usually calls it the Piano Bar. People hardly use the piano ... instead they put their empty cups on it. The Piano Bar is only open on Wednesday and Sunday nights, unless there is a special event. There are about fifteen or so designated bartenders (me included) so I will only be on duty about two or three times a month. Last night was my first day on the job.
Two Brazilian guys (Flavio and Cris - these are real people) and I formed an acoustic guitar band here. We are called the Wa and our first public concert is on Wednesday, November 13. Actually we also call ourselves le Wa for all the French people, and we have an e-mail address (the_le_wa@hotmail.com). Shoot us a message! We already had our first private the Wa party at the apartment of Ale (the one from the climbing wall) with raving reviews, so on the 13th we are going to invite everyone to the Piano Bar and have a big show with audience participation. Aside from our core members, we have Andrew the Canadian and Amine the Moroccan who are designated drummers, but we don't have any drums so it's sort of wishful thinking at this point. We also have several female backing vocalists and dancers to go along with the music. Our line-up of lovely vocalists includes Ale the Brazilian, Marita the Ecuadorian, Mariana the Greek and Judit the Hungarian. If Steve W. were to become our bass player we'd have a full-blown band going here. There seem to be a lot of frustrated, angry women in this program because by far the most popular song is our rendition of "I Will Survive". Flavio, Cris and I are "cross-pollinating" (a business school term), as I am learning some very cool Brazilian music that I never really got exposed to before. Actually I've become pretty good friends with a lot of Brazilians here ... I think I am learning more about Brazil than I am about France.
And studying? Yes, I am studying. But you don't really want to hear about that, do you?
Below I included some pictures from our recent Halloween party in the Piano Bar. I dressed as a flasher. These are the only pix I've got so far so bear with me.