Le Ping Pong

French people love ping pong.

Preuve #1:


This is an entire gym devoted SOLEY to ping pong. Its a salle de tennis de table (Ping Pong room). No basketball hoops or anything. You come, you play ping pong.

Preuve #2:


This boy was like 9 and played with the intensity of a 25 year old. They don't mess around.

Preuve #3:

This was one of the refs. Like I said they don't mess around.

To explain, one of the moniteurs (French students who are there to help us foreigners out) named Yoann plays ping pong in his hometown. He's on a table tennis team, and they have tournaments on the weekends against other towns. I went with my friend Cody to cheer him on this past Sunday and it was QUITE the experience. I never knew ping pong could be so intense. Lots of "Allez Allez Allez!" and random French swearing. Afterward, Cody and I ate dinner at Yoann's with his parents, who were very interested in learning English words, and seeing what we thought about politics (I was asked what I though about health care...I wouldn't even know what to say in English...). We also played some Wii Sports, which I kicked butt at :)

No way to not look awkward playing Wii

Saturday I went to La Forêt Brocéliande, which is rumored to be the location of the King Arthur myths. Merlin chilled in this forest with Lancelot, and there's even a place called Merlin's tomb. It sounds awesome, right? Well, we didn't really know what we were getting in to. Got dropped off in a random city called Paimpoint only to find out that everything awesome was about 9 miles away. Cool. And instead of being able to wander through the woods like flower children, we had to trudge down busy Road 38, complete with speeding semis! Though, I'll admit, the forest was SUPER pretty and it was nice to get out of the city. The town was small and full of random Arthur references, like Road of the knights of the round table, and a big metal cut out of Merlin. I guess its more fun if you go there with a car because you can get to all the stuff easily. All in all, it was a good day, nice weather, lots of trees.

Classes are in full swing. Most classes are two hours long though, which makes for a LONGGGG day.

A bientot mes amis.