Epiphany Inducing Broken Ankles

I'm just going to recount the last couple of days, for pleasure's sake.

Sunday we went on this walk with all the family plus C's boyfriend's family and dogs. It was freezing and I forgot to wear a scarf. Brilliant thinking once again on my part. I got Skype-raped by my family. When you're just casually on your computer and then BAM. SKYPE. And I'm too polite or too much or a worrier to just hang up. Oh, no. I must ALWAYS answer.

In fact, even my family seemed slightly startled.

Monday morning the bus (which I have to catch at 7.23- meaning I have to get up at 6 in the morning) was a normal sized bus, but that size bus is too small to fit all of us who usually catch the bus so we went to school in what felt like a tin can. If there's one things that's universal, it's bus etiquette. Everywhere, it's the same. You know, the whole stand up for old ladies and don't be a dick and blast your music everywhere. 

I always forget exactly what I do during French class. I think that's mainly because every lesson I have is half me daydreaming and half inner me yelling at me to concentrate and stop daydreaming. So the actual content just kind of goes straight over my head. But I generally now have a vague idea about what's going on. Vaguely.

But Mondays we have sport. Yay. Sport can actually be quite fun because we're doing gymnastics right now so there's a lot of attempting to do cartwheels and things like that and hence a lot of giggling. And I was having fun. We were doing this routine we have to make up. I am, in fact, useless at gymnastics. I'm not flexible and I'm not all that good at balancing and I can't do a cartwheel. However, because I am perhaps a little lighter than some others so I usually end up having to climb on people's backs to do pyramids and things.

That particular time, after kind of rushing through our routine a couple of times, we had to get up and perform in front of the class. And so we did. First time- no dramas. All went relatively smoothly. But we had to do it again for the video. Yeah, they were filming us. So, there's one part of the routine where I have to get on this girl J's back. Long story short- her back was too curved and so I kind of fell on her ankle and may or may not have broken it a little bit.

PLUS ONE POINT TO ME!

So, whilst A was taking J to the locker room to get changed and wait for an ambulance her parents, I just waited around with O, another girl in my group, on the gym mat thing. (We've all seen them. Those strange blue mattress like things that barely do anything when you fall down? Well, there was a stack of them.) And I stared off into space thinking "Oh God, I'm a horrid person, I've just killed J, oh God... etc". I don't often stare off into space, and sometimes HFD walks past when I stare.

It's weird thing that now that I think about it happens quite frequently. I'll be staring at nothing thinking about whether or not I should clean my nails or whatever and then HFD will just slowly saunter past, looking at me. I know he's looking at me, I just know it. Usually I pretend I haven't noticed and everything works out fine but this particular time I though, "Fuck it," and looked up. My timing wasn't the best time since I looked whilst he was looking away so he had to do a double-take and then I smiled without showing any teeth. (If you want a mental image, Google "Gollum.") and looked away.

O saw the whole exchange and so:

O: Do you like HFD?

Me: No.

O: Do you like R (another boy in my class)?

Me: No. Nobody!

O: Oh.

Me: Do you like HFD?

O: No. But, I can understand you liking him.

Me: Hmm...

O: But he's mean to everyone.

Me: Yeah.

And that was the point when I made up my mind.

This whole HFD thing has gone on too far, for far too long. I don't like him, he's just mildly attractive. And then I decided to never ever have any more contact anymore, ever. And I would be a dick to him what was then tomorrow, Tuesday- the day he talks to me.

When Tuesday rolled around, it started out all pretty much the same. We had a free period so me, A and O hung out in the girl's locker room where it was nice and toasty. And then we had TP.

What usually happens in TP is because of my foreign ignorance and/or awkwardness I stand around or I end up doing dishwashing. But, I don't know, the prof had decided I was going to do something today- I was going to start doing some waitressing. It was scary, let me tell you. Why? Because this isn't your usual slap-dash dining with a paper tablecloth. This is fancy dining, like you must always walk around the table clockwise dining. 

Naturally, I stood there in the middle of the restaurant having a mild anxiety attack. And naturally, when A asked me if I could help her serve water I said no, because I was certain if I did that something would catch on fire. This got the prof mildly annoyed and he came up to me and was all like; "You must do things" and I just nodded and blushed. So, when A was serving the main course, I took two plates and served that. And when A was serving the dessert course, the prof dragged me over and I served a grand total of one fruit salad to some poor girl.

And obviously by the prof's count one bowl of fruit salad isn't enough so I had to serve another one, and so he dragged me over to the next person's table- HFD. I forget exactly what happened because I was dying of embarrassment for no particular reason- CURSE YOU TEENAGE GIRLDOM- and so I did it super quickly and then ran back to my little corner and stood there like a goldfish if goldfish (goldfishes?) could stand like an awkward teenage girl.

And then I was out where I belong- dish duty.

Today, Wednesday, the only thing that happened that was "interesting" was I may have gotten full marks on a test- in Gestion, possibly the stupidest subject ever. I don't like Gestion because I have a nagging feeling that even if it were in English, I wouldn't understand it. But I think I only got those marks because it was all just true and false questions, and when you've done enough of those, you know that if out of five questions the second and third are both true, then the first and fourth are false and the fifth has to be true.

Introduction to French Boys

To clarify what exactly is going on with me and the male part of French culture, I need an entire post. Tara now thinks I'm a slut but I blame Steph for that as well as my tendency to freak out over trivial things and hurriedly message my "friends" over the internet.
Basically, the best way to describe French boys is through a case study. Luckily, I happen to know of the perfect male for this in-depth analysis. His name is I, or as I like to call him; Hot French Douchebag, or HFD for short.
I'll start with how we met.
Well, I came to France with pretty freaking high expectations. French boys- aren't they the most romantic in the world? Gradually I realised in the course of my first day that France was just like any other country- it has its fair share of assholes and not-so-attractive guys. But, however, I had noticed one. He seemed to be a bit of a loner, just kind of keeping to himself in class. Oh, and he was super hot. Super hot. I thought to myself, "He's probably a struggling artist or something." Which made him even more attractive. He even seemed quite nice.
Oh, how wrong I was.
The first time I actually met him was during this class called "TP Hebergement". I was kind of excited to do it because our task for that lesson was checking each other into this fake hotel. I hadn't really talked to A a lot and it seemed to be a great bonding exercise. Just when A was starting with "Welcome to the Hotel", we noticed HFD pulling a chair up between us.
My french wasn't very good back then,  but I'm pretty sure the conversation went something like this:
A: What are you doing?
HFD: There's no one else to work with. I have to join a pair.
A and I looked around the room at the same time and sure enough, everyone else was paired off with someone else, which left poor HFD all alone. And coincidentally, that allowed him to join pairs with the new Australian girl and her french sister! La chance!
His presence made things remarkably more awkward. He kept on asking my questions in English, like "Do you have MSN?" and things like that. I "tactfully" avoided answering any of them directly by using English that was too advanced for his level. And then he promptly tried to teach me the word "ass" in French. (It's fesse, in case anyone was wondering.)
Just as a side note, A detests HFD. Makes sense, because he's an absolute dick to her. He calls her "Fiona"- like from Shrek.
I forbade myself to look at him after that. Who knows when he would do something like that again? The answer came soon enough- Tuesdays.
Tuesdays, my class has TP. As fore-mentioned, my school is an hotellerie school, so in order to gain the proper skills to go into restaurants and hotels etc, the school has a full-functional restaurant in the school, operated by the students. That Tuesday, it was my class's turn to be the waiters/waitresses. And because I was foreign and not at all skilled in that area, I was put behind the scenes- aka dishwashing and cleaning glasses. A was leaving me in the care of some other girl called M so I was kind of vulnerable in that sense.
That was when HFD pounced.
Imagine this; you're foreign, you barely understand the language, you have no idea what's going and then some cute guy walks up to you and asks if you want to do dish duty with him.
What do you do? You stand there staring at him until your french sister comes up to you and tells you that it's okay to go with him and that he's not going to rape you. So I did just that.
French boys are curious. HFD asked me so many questions, perhaps the most important one being; "are Australian boys funny?"
Me: Yes, very.
HFD: And me? (leans in with a big goofy grin) Am I funny?
Me: No, you're boring.
Looking back, I have no idea what made me say that. I'm pretty sure my train of thought was "NO, FUCK, WHAT DO I DO, WHAT DO I DO? WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF FUNNY? AGH!". My brain neatly supplied me with "boring". And it repeatedly came to haunt me.
His face when I said immediately switched to one of a sad puppy that's been left out in the rain and also his paws hurt because a badger bit them off. I meant it as a joke.
About an hour later, whilst cleaning glasses, he comes up to me.
HFD: You think I'm boring?
Me: Yes, you're so (I can't think of how to describe him...)
HFD: (SAYING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AND STARING AT ME REALLY INTENSELY)
Me: It was a joke.
HFD: What?
Me: It was a joke, you know, ha ha ha. A very bad joke.
HFD: Oh. Because, I thought A has been telling you bad things about me. She doesn't like me.
Note: I thought we had resolved this whole "boring" issue, but sometimes he'll randomly bring it up again.
Me: Uh-huh. (Can't see why.)
HFD: Do you like me?
Me: Wh-what?
HFD: Do you like me?
Me: I- I-
HFD: (intense stare)
Me: Sure. If it helps you sleep at night.
HFD: (too much English) What?
Me: Sure.
HFD: Sure means... yes?
Me: Yes.
HFD: (goes back to washing glasses)
And from that point forward, every Tuesday I have interacted with HFD in some form or another. It's never any other day of the week, it's always just Tuesdays. I do have fun with him, but that's mainly because he's super rude and immature. He reminds me of someone, but I'm not sure who...
Another thing that HFD does that every other french boy does is swear. In English, and badly. It's just all the swear words in rap songs. But they don't know how to use them properly. I have been told so many times about sucking dicks by so many boys in my class I have an urge to take them by the shoulders, give them a good shake, and scream "THAT'S NOT HOW WE SAY THINGS IN ENGLISH".
And consequently, I have been trying to teach them how to swear correctly. Which is hard, trust me.
I told them about the word "ranga", and now I am still trying to convince HFD that "mother-fucking bitch ranga" is not an acceptable swear word.
So, that's French boys in a nutshell; arrogant, bad swearers and thoroughly enjoying having "fun" with me.
I actually have bundles of even more delightful stories involving HFD and me, but let's just leave it at that, shall we?