Internet has been spotty lately - François just moved and his isn't hooked up, so we've been borrowing wireless, but it only works sometimes. "Borrowing" actually isn't a euphemism - as far as I understand it, when you pay for internet at home, it automatically comes with wireless for your home. It's an open network in the sense that you don't put in a password just to connect to it, but once you're connected, the only site you can visit is the internet company's homepage. But if you're a customer of theirs, you put in your username and pword and then you have free wireless access. So it's cool because anyplace where someone or some business uses the same company, you get free access. François' parents use a company called Neuf, and so do some other people in his building, so we can get on with his parents' info. It's a weak network, though, and it seems to be completely random when we can get it and when we can't.

("Free wireless," as a concept, has not caught on here. I'm constantly seeing a network called "FreeWifi," which is a cruel joke, because "Free" is just another internet company with the same deal as above. Some coffee shops have it, but you have to ask for the password, and my French is not yet that advanced. Maybe when I get to the point of being able to order a coffee without being answered in English…)

Anyway! The last few days.

Friday was a slow day. François had class until around 4, so I slept in and repacked my bags so that the things I need immediately are mostly consolidated into one bag rather than spread across 3. (Is there any system for finding things when you're living out a suitcase that doesn't involve rummaging for five minutes every time you need something? If there is, I haven't heard of it.) I managed to miss the 2 or 3h window when cafes actually serve lunch, but I managed to order a coffee with a minimum of misunderstanding, and walked around the neighborhood a little. François doesn't really live downtown - his place is in the 9th "arrondisement" or district, if you're curious - but it's still pretty walkable, with a lot of little cafes and businesses and a big new movie theater. It's also right on the Saône (one of Lyon's two rivers, more or less rhymes with "zone") and there's kind of a tiny little park, really just a tree-lined walkway with benches. Very pretty.

After François got home we walked around a little more - I hadn't wanted to go very far on my own, since I wasn't excited about the idea of asking for directions if I got lost - and then his mom picked us up to go to their place for Anaïs' party. (Since I realize I didn't say this before, it's pronounced AH-nah-EES. Cool name.) I wound up deciding to spend most of the night upstairs, since I'm not really that good at speaking. The way my French is right now, I'm happy to listen to people talk to each other/in a group, because I'm starting to piece things together and I can pick out phrases here and there. But I think it's kind of awkward for other people when I listen without talking at all, so I didn't want to do too much of that. The only time I really managed to communicate was when this huge . . something, it looked like a bee but it was so much bigger I can't believe it was one, flew into the kitchen. We were outside since Anaïs was grilling, and anyway window screens aren't that common in France. They kept trying to chase it back out the door, but it wouldn't go, so I finally pointed out that it was probably attracted to the kitchen light, and it would be easier if they turned it off for a minute. Not that I actually said anything that complicated or correct; I think I said something much closer to "Je crois qu'il aime les luz" and pointed. "Luz," because I am awesome, is not only Spanish but also singular, and therefore neither made sense to anyone nor agreed with "les". Oh well. Hand gestures are key, which incidentally is why I'm afraid to use the phone. That's a later problem.

So Friday night I went to sleep somewhat frustrated with my inability to understand or communicate, and Saturday morning I woke up able to more or less understand things. I have no idea why. I'm still far from understanding every word or even the meaning of every sentence, but I can pretty much follow the flow of conversations now, which is a huge difference from Wednesday. The exception to this, for some unknown but really annoying reason, is that I still virtually always fail to understand questions directed at me. So I'll be following along without too much problem, until the point when it occurs to someone to ask some comprehension-checking question, at which point I say "ah…comment?" ("ah . . . how was that again?") and everyone assumes I haven't understood a word. Hopefully that won't last long.

Anaïs and their mom were out for the afternoon, so F and I ate with Mr. Bargel. Last time I visited I got almost no sense of him - my French was almost nonexistent, and I never anyway I saw him without Mrs. Bargel, so she and François and his sister Sophie did almost all the talking. This time I've talked to him much more, and I'm really glad - he's really kind, and extremely patient with my French, and he's so encouraging when I speak it that I don't really feel self-conscious. He's also probably the best at speaking slowly without forgetting and speeding up again, which I've found to be a rare skill.

In the afternoon F took me to the mall (I've established that Carrefour is not the name of the entire thing, just the huge department store) so I could get a cell phone. All the things I need to do to get established here seem to be interlocking and circular - you can't get a phone or a bank account without an address; you can't find an apartment without a phone; you can't get paid without a bank account; you can't pay for some things without a french bank card; etc. That list goes on, too - I need to hear back from my schools so I can get a form so I can apply for a medical appointment so I can validate my visa, all of which requires an address and a bank account and a phone. The phone seemed like the easiest point of entry, and we were able to just give the guy the Bargels' address. (That won't work for the bank; they'll require a letter from my landlord stating that I live at an address, and then proof that the landlord lives there, and then proof that the landlord is French). Once again, I was really grateful to have François' help. I really don't know if I would have gotten it done without him (or maybe Anaïs) to help me; I barely understood any of the questions the guy asked. There was also some confusion because European credit cards have PINs just like debit cards, and although the machine understood and printed out a receipt for me to sign, the guy had never had to ask a customer to sign a receipt before and was completely confused. (Which was slightly compounded by François' explanation that the signature has to match the signature on the back of the card, since instead of signing, I wrote "ask for ID" on mine.) He was really nice, though - so far, no one at all has been snide about my miserable French - and smiled and said the French equivalent of "Hey, I've learned something new" when we finally got the credit card thing straightened out.

So now I have a French cell phone, the number to which I'll give you on request. If you have Google voice, you can text my new phone from there, and I have free texts, so that's pretty cool. (For some reason I don't seem to be able to text American numbers unless I'm replying to a received text - I have no idea why that should be true, but there it is.)

At night François had a housewarming party at his new place, which was kind of fun. Honestly, though, I had more fun getting ready - three of his friends came over to help cook, which was much more on a manageable scale for me. One of them, Ludo, I had met when I visited a couple years ago. I remember meeting him clearly, because he looked so confused when I shook hands instead of giving the two kisses that François told him "Ah, c'est parce qu'elle est américaine" ("ah, it's because she's American") to explain my strange behavior. Of course I knew that French people kiss hello, but it hadn't occurred to me at all that not doing so would come across as rude or, at the least, strange. This time I remembered, so things got off on a much less awkward foot. He doesn't speak any English, unlike most of François and Anaïs' friends who went to college and so had to learn at least some, but he makes up for it by being quite good with pantomime and facial expressions. For some reason I'm also much less shy about trying to speak foreign languages when I know the other person couldn't much more easily slip into English, so we were able to chat a bit. A very little bit. A very little bit in which I continually had to ask him to repeat himself "plus lentement, s'il te plaît." Still, it's something, right? I suspect that being able to actually communicate with Ludo will be the true test of my French.

Eventually there were ten of us, and for the most part I slipped back into my role of relatively silent observer, but with much more of a sense of what was going on than I had the night before with Anaïs' friends. Three of the people there were from Salvador and another was also fluent in Spanish, so there was a bit of that on the side, which was a break that I very much appreciated.

Things were somewhat awkward because François invited another kid who he met at UVA, an international student from Singapore whom I had never met and who speaks virtually no French at all. He's here to take French classes, but I felt kind of bad for him last night because all the conversation was in French and I don't think he understood more than a very few things that were directed at him, very slowly and with English sprinkled in. There was a funny moment at the beginning of the night when Ludo was offering to pour people (small) glasses of apple liqueur, and this kid (whose name I never did catch) decided for some reason that he wanted some apple liqueur in his beer. With his French and Ludo's English both essentially nonexistent, there was an extended moment of "yes! pour some of it in here!" gestures from the kid and "no, there's no way on earth that's what you really want; what are you trying to tell me?" expressions from Ludo before he finally poured it, extremely tentatively and waiting every second to be stopped and told what was actually wanted. Made me laugh. I still have no idea why the UVA kid decided to ask for that, but he did seem to enjoy it, so maybe I'm missing out.

It's funny, the way my comprehension ebbs and flows right now. If I lose track of a conversation it can take a good while for me to pick back up on what's going on, but as long as I'm following the thread I seem to do okay. But it's also incredibly clear how sharply my mental processes drop off when I'm tired - I hit a wall last night toward the end of the dinner, and suddenly I couldn't follow anything that was being said at all. Which is quite a good incentive to get a lot of sleep, so I think I'll do that now and put off writing about today. This is quite long enough as it is.

I've really been very happy here so far, even with the frustrations. This is a good place.

More soon.