A Tea Party!

Last night I went to a tea party thrown for some of the assistants by Les Amis de Violette. Who are Les Amis de Violette? They're a group of Avignonnais who meet every week with Micaela to learn English from her. They range in age from 40 to 80, and they range in skill level, too. They threw us (Darija, me, Robyn, Marius, Ciaran, Renee) a tea party because we have all been to their English lass, invited by Micaela, to introduce ourselves and talk about our respective countries (United States: Darija, me, Robyn; Taiwan: Marius; Ireland: Ciaran; Jamaica: Renee) and to hear our different accents as we all speak English. When I went we ended up talking about French and American politics (!!!) which was pretty difficult for me because... um... I'm not the greatest, at the moment, at keeping up with current events. Ew, I hate admitting that. I also ended up singing a cappella for them because, when they asked me "what do you REALLY want to do in your life?" and I responded with "I'd like to be a singer/songwriter" they were all like "ooh la la! sing! sing!" and so I did.

ANYway, they threw us this tea party chez Micaela and it was great because it was like Auberge Espagnole again but with old people. We all sat around speaking in English and French, practicing, stumbling over our words and tenses, piecing together sentences, etc. Micaela invited me to sing a few songs for them, since I'd already done it and they wanted to hear the songs in English again. This time I wrote out the lyrics for them beforehand so they could 'etudier' and follow along. I sang "For You" (they wanted to hear stuff I'd written myself) and the one phrase they didn't understand and kept asking about was "I am standing on my lover's leap." I had fun explaining my attempts at poetry for them.

I also sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane" because I wanted to sing a song about departures and I took one look at Darija (my roommate) and I got hella choked up and... well, crud. 2/3 of the people I know here are leaving and I haven't taken too much time yet to think about that and I started last night when I sang the song and... I'm going to miss everyone.

Then, of course, there was food and we all stuffed ourselves on olive tampanade (whoa, how do you spell that?), chocolates, cakes, cookies (little navettes which are all provencale-y and stuff), Taiwanese tea thanks to Marius, champagne, wine, quiche, and other goodness. Awesome. Gotta remember to taste everything native to Provence before I go home.

It was so nice to have this tea party because: Les Amis de Violette are really nice, it gave me a chance to see the other assistants again before they leave (AHHHHH), and I love being around the good ol' melange of languages. I am so impressed by these Amis because they're all learning English at an older age and I think that's brave and fabulous. Makes me braver, en fait, knowing that there are people, young and old, going out and practicing, making mistakes, stumbling over things, to communicate. And it also reminded me that I'm not actually awful at French and I'm grateful for that reminder.
pictured: Robyn, Renee, Ciaran, Marius, Darija, me

Woohoo! I'm off to start the day and holycrow LISA WILL BE HERE TOMORROW.