Surprise!

                                                      Chomérac

It's been a couple days since my host dad's surprise birthday party and since the secret's been out for a little while, I suppose it's safe to blog about. For the past few months, Anne has been planning this huge party without stop and I must say, I'm quite impressed by how she pulled it off without a glitch.

After Anne reserved a huge party room, hired a DJ, and sent hundreds of invitations to family, friends, and coworkers, I jumped into the mix to help a bit with the later preparations. My mission: the punch. (Anne kind of dragged me into this one haha) We went shopping for all the ingredients while Manu was at work and we must have looked like the two biggest alcoholics walking out of Hyper U with dozens of bottles of rum and cognac and a 50 liter garbage can in tow. But on the other hand, there was orange juice and pineapple juice in the cart, so we looked like healthy alcoholics. 

We lugged everything back to the house without managing to break any bottles and began making the punch. It was actually kind of fun because it was like playing witches with the cauldron of potion and a stick to stir it all together! (That's my nerdy Harry Potter side jumping in.) Anyway, it actually turned out really well, and I was pretty proud of our work at the end of the day.

On Saturday (party day!) I met up with Carolina, the Brazilian in Aubenas (I'm starting to feel bad because that has become her identifier every time I introduce her) and we headed over to the party venue in Chomérac. On a side note, Chomérac is the town of my next host family, and it's about a 10-15 minute drive to Privas. After setting up all the tables and chairs, Carolina and I decided to walk around for a few hours. Since we are typical exchange students, our outing involved girl talk, photo shoots, conversations switching back and forth between multiple languages, and food. And since being an exchange student consists of being positive and happy all the time (when you obviously have to force it sometimes), we finally got a chance to flat-out complain and feel depressed together, and I will be the first one to say: it sure felt good. In an ironic way.

The party started that evening once Manu arrived at the venue with a family friend. There were tons of people there and it was apparent by Manu's expression that Anne's hard work paid off. People were laughing, dancing, and singing, and Anne and Manu were grinning from ear to ear like giddy kids on Christmas all night long. 

Carolina and I stuck together the rest of the night and we mostly talked. And talked. And talked some more. We took a slight break at 5:30 a.m. to sleep a bit, but it was pretty consistent. We've already shared our life stories and secrets and everything that usually goes unsaid. Sometimes I think about how much easier life would be if I had an exchange student in Privas with me, but I guess there's pros and cons to every situation. I would never have learned French as quickly as I did if there was another exchange student in Privas, but I do miss hanging out with friends. Luckily, I still have these rare weekends to be thankful for and they are totally worth the wait!