Saturday part II: Family

After I had arrived back from market,  my host host mom Lucie had gone off to her rock-climbing-in-caves class( English translation???). The house is such where it is impossible to tell if anyone is home so when people started pounding on the door at 12h30 exactly and she didn't answer my cries I didn't know what to do. The people it turned out were her parents and little sister who arrived carrying arm loads of things and wanted to know why I hadn't let them in sooner. I finally got it out of them who they were and after that it was much less awkward. Lucie showed up a few minutes later with her boys whom I had never met. When I met Augusin (9) and Auraud (7) I could tell I was supposed to do something because they paused and looked insistent. Looking around me I realized everyone else was doing a two cheek bisou. Our introduction complete, they took me off to demonstrate their hi-tech top collection which comes with launchers. Each top spins for about 3 minutes and they can duel. The hyper-toupie with balancing mechanisms was unbeatable for time. I liked being in the midst of a family because the langauge flowed and I learned lots. Lucie's sister Camille is 17 so her French is hip and with it. I learned so much just listening to people, but by 11pm last night I was ready to drop from exhaustion. When everyone was moved in, we dined and had intense conversations about wine, cheese, osysters and American pizza. The family had traveled in America and was impressed by the varying and dramatic country-side; outraged however by the enormous pizzas they were served( take out if you can imagine such a thing) which they were convinced could only fit into the grossly enlarged stomachs of the Americans. A discussion of "Zuper Zize Me" followed. Coup de grace: I have never eaten at Mcdonalds. Yes yes double yes!   This morning the grandma asked me if I habitually ate large sausages and eggs for breakfast to which I also responded in the negative.  To get her goat however I mentioned that I ate peanut butter toast. A nice shudder followed.
Americans may stuff themselves, but we had the biggest variety of foods ever yesterday. I want the family to show up more often. People kept passing food off on me and depite seconds I was starving each time we ate again. I think the difference here is portion size and the idea of courses which is foreign to me. Eating a four course meal sounds gigantic, but not if each course is miniature. Meals were not as formal as I expected, but got really intense from all the bantering. Everyone sits really close together and talks in each others faces all at once. They tease the little boys mercilously which is just as well because ohhh are they mischievious.   Everyone was really nice and chatted with me too.  I hope they come back soon because they seemed like really interesting people with excentric interests such as para-gliding. I want to hear more weird things about America too. Camille the 17 year old who is about 400 times for sophisticated than I am told me that after her one month homestay in Ohio she was surprised to see that I was skinny and that I was not a slob. She was weirded out that Americans wore their pajamas around the house and t-shirts outside the house. I didn't have the vocabulary to tell her it was all by design on my part. I didn't bring any t-shirts and I purposely do not set foot out of my room without being fully clothed. I do wear socks around the house which I think is a bit gauche, but I stand firm...
I went for a long walk in the afternoon and I do hope that while I was gone they had a nice chat about something weird that I did unknowingly. When I returned we played some chess and I helped de-shell the langoustin ( English translation??) which was entertaining and splattery (see my glasses). I thought they were lobster chunks for the longest time, but no. In Bretagne they are served in tomato sauce with herbs and rice. They are probably eating them right now at the family patriarch's 90th birthday party.
Besides stopping over to take Lucie+ the boys to the b-day partay, Lucie's parents had come to see her improv theater group compete against another team. I went too. Rennes is really great for people watching and improv theater attracts a very interesting lot. They locked the audiance out of the theater for some reason and everyone was standing around in the cold griping about it. Camille, summed it up to the assembled throng: "oh, they are artists." Pacified, everyone lit up fresh ciggerettes. Once it started, the improv show was really fun and the audience voted after each skit as to which team did the best job. There are rules to this type of theater and an arbitre who showed up wearing an umpire outfit with a kazoo. Everyone boo-ed him in and he dead panned bad-cop the entire time. It was a riot. I especially enjoyed when the skits parodied Americans, British and Bretons. The British and Texas twinged French accents were really good. Thank God I don't sound quite like that. The "Texan" was of course an American military type who was requisitioning Breton vintage cidre while armed with a machine gun. The three year old next to me was just gawfawing for some reason. I still can't believe how much WWII creeps into everyday life around here and these were young people making up the jokes on the spot.