Saturday, September 3, 2011

What a cool day !!!

Today was Awesome. 


First, let me explain more of the position where I live. I live in a small, beautiful town called Cysoing. But there is a HUGE city very close called Lille, where I'll be moving to in about January. In this city There's this thing called the "Braderie", which is the world for garage sale. But this Braderie is the biggest in Europe, lasting three days and with TWO MILLION people. So everyone in Europe digging out their basements and coming to sell it.... 


First of all, every kind of human at every age and from every walk of life was there. I've never seen so many kinds of people in one place. It was amazing. And half the stuff looked like it had been dug out of the ocean from treasure chests. Ancient watches, coins, three hundred year old jewlry, Indian silk and English lace, clothes, shoes, food....ANYTHING you could think of, it was at the Braderie. 


I spent the day with my host Father, walking around for about six hours. It was really great. But so...so....so...hot and sunny. 


First off, I will explain the feelings of dehydration to you if you are foreign to them. Sleepy, numb hands, numb knees, headache, clumsiness...all were experienced today before I could remember how to ask for a bottle of water in French. I could have asked Papa Phillipe, but I was embarassed... 


There were a lot of African relics and...stuff! For sale too, which I didn't expect. Their jewelry, statues, herbs. We drank some special sweet mint tea, a common north african dessert. Mint tea is my favorite thing in the world, so it was perfect. 


We saw everything there was to see, walking for hours on end down winding cobble streets with hundreds' of years of history and treasure. We stopped for a beer in between walks, talking a lot and having so much fun. He's very interested in History, and high ranking officer hats from all over, and we found a german tank driver hat!! Yay... we found a Nazi helmet too but that one was left alone. There were a lot of interesting weapons too. 


Many hookas were for sale. And tattoos were being done on the street, along with other....fun stuff. Lol. It was nuts, some of the people were crazy. 


At about six, we realized it was going to rain and the subway would be jam packed, and it was already. I almost got smashed into the subway door. That was a little scary, there was so many people and we were the last stop. 


When we arrived home, I drank three glasses of water really quickly and then my host mother Laure, Papa Phillipe and I biked to dinner in a beautiful little restaurant across town. My bike is terrible, hahaha the brakes do not work.  We ate muscles and frites, a braderie tradition. It was really very good. And then we biked home, and just as we almost got back to the house it began to rain like crazy. Lightning is flashing outside, the rain is pounding and the thunder is shaking the lights hahah but it's so great, I'm sick of the sun and I'm going to sleep very soon. 


I was naughty though. I called my Mom, pretending to cry and telling her I wanted to come home. She freaked, but I started cracking up about two seconds later. She's never going to hear that actual call from me, so I might as well give her a little bit of that experience of panic. She started laughing too and we had a really good talk. Everything is totally great. A Bientot. 

2 comments:

  1. Hey, Be nice to your mom! -Uncle Steve

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  2. Hahahahah I am nice, and after that we had a really good talk! -Niece Megan

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