First Snow and the European Union

Bri is wandering around the apartment vacuuming everything in sight, singing Queen songs and taking breaks to vacuum is vacuum.. so I find myself with a moment to spare to detail yesterday's party.

It was one of those chilly days, I shoved myself into an oversized PSU sweatshirt, a jacket, a scarf and some gloves.  I didn't care if it made me put on about 15 lbs, it was 15 lbs of warmth!  I wandered outside and there it was- the first snow.  I remember in Portland seeing the first snow, it always made me feel like I could accept the cold- a weather-justification.  Lyon is incredible with the flurries; the city is gorgeous, the lights shimmering as the snow is falling.  The old stone streets (of my street) and the people all bundled up like me.  The first snow represents the real 'winter' and the fact that Christmas is just around the corner.

It also represented the day I decided to invite an array of Europeans into my apartment!

I dub it the 'European Union', but in reality we only had 4 of the 27 countries represented.  Sweden, Denmark, Finland and France.  I felt like a pseudo-American summit meeting except in this meeting our only goal was to get drunk, laugh and show off all the languages.

It began with wine, continued into cocktails and ended with some more wine.  The drunker we all got, the more we lost inhibitions but the more we lost our ability to communicate in a common language.  By 12am, the Swede and Finnish was speaking in phrased out English, the French abilities were shot from me and I resorted to making jokes about 'gros saucisses'.  It was really quite a wonderful experience, even though many of us didn't really understand each other but we were able to communicate and laugh.

It's really something sitting with 15 Europeans in one room, every one of them were so dynamic and interesting- a few of the Frenchies were talking at me as if I was fluent... so I nodded along and sipped more of my booze, assuming that the mix of the drinking would improve my speaking skills.

It did not.

It did, however, hit me with a killer hangover to which I was bedridden until 5pm today.  Goes to show, you cannot outdrink Europeans; they have about 5 more years practice on me..

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