Today, when my bus rolled up to the stop, I was surprised to see a huge banner reading "Dernier Jour du Boulot" ("Last Day of Work") across the front of it. Immediately, I thought there was a strike going on. Merde, I'm already running late! But then the bus did stop, and the doors opened, so I went ahead and got on. As I stepped onto the bus, I was met with a bunch of laughing and yelling in French. I didn't really understand what everyone was yelling about at first, but I saw colorful balloons and guessed this was probably not a strike. Turns out it was the bus driver's last day of work before retirement! He was wearing some kind of bib that said "La Retraite" on it, a balloon hat, and an inflatable water wing thing on one arm (don't really know where that came from). There were balloons hanging from the bars, and like 6 of his friends were riding with him in the front and yelling about his last day to everyone that got on. Every time we passed another bus, he honked like 10 times and waved. It was actually a pretty fun bus ride! And it turns out I wasn't the only one that thought it was a strike at first; an actual French person told me she thought it was a strike too when she saw the sign.
I also met my marraine today! I signed up for a "parrainage" (mentoring) program with an organization that welcomes foreign students to Bordeaux. I wish EAP had told us about it because it's a really cool program! Each foreign student gets paired up with a French student (a marraine or parrain), who shows them around and can answer their questions about life in Bordeaux, etc. I found out about it on the organization's website, and my friend signed up for it earlier and said it was great. My marraine is really nice! We met on campus and then went downtown to walk around a little. And she showed me this cool coffee shop that makes crazy hot chocolates, and I got one with Nutella in it. So good! She's studying English, but we spoke French the whole time. It was a little hard to understand her when she spoke quickly, but it was really cool to have a longer French conversation with someone outside my host family. And she told me about some cool places to go downtown and French movies and TV shows to check out. C'était génial!!!
À bientôt!
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