We're Still Here: New Year / Frèrrakech, Brorocco

This post was started on an Amtrak train two and a half weeks ago. Let's forgive LVEB's negligence and get in that early January mood again:

A very happy new year to all of our readers! 2012 is finally upon us, the moment we have all been waiting for/Wikipedia-ing since May 21 last year. How did you celebrate the holiday? Did you disobey your parents and walk through Times Square? Did you watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and stare in disgust at bands with no integrity performing to ululating, soulless teenagers? Did you rediscover your love for André California Champagne?

Not me, no sir. I counted down with a cup full of Veuve Clicquot and a hand full of Wheat Thins at a swanky party in Alphabet City, Manhattan. Everyone except me was an alum of either Vassar or Wesleyan, aka the only people I will ever meet from now on for the rest of my life. It was weird being the lone undergrad, though honestly everybody was mad jealous that I was still in school; it was like being in a room with people from the Matrix, all regretting the crushing disillusionment of reality. (I may not have understood that movie.) One of the partygoers took me aside and menacingly whispered, "You. Are. So. Lucky." I didn't know whether to laugh or give him my lunch money.

Another thing that was so nice about the fête, the hostesses allowed me to take a nap in an unoccupied bedroom from about 10:30 to 11:30, a crucial period that restored me enough to make it well past the ball dropping and other activities. You're probably thinking, "this guy napped on New Year's Eve? What a total square." Well square this, Judge Reinhold: one day previously I was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Lest ye forget the original reason for LVEB, we've been on Berlin Time (that's what my phone called it) for the last four and a half months. Cut me some fucking slack. And for your information, Encyclopedia Brown, I was wrapping up a whole bunch of transcontinental travel, going from Morocco to France to New York in 30 hours. Which brings me to the crux of this post.

Spending a week in Morocco at the tail end of my semester abroad was the perfect de-orientation: just enough French speakers to smooth the transition out of l'Héxagone, but thankfully so many more English speakers so I felt like people were understanding me for the first time in months. Moroccan Arabic was harder to understand than my host mother's obsession with Gary Sinise, but I did learn some valuable things in Marrakech. Here are a few:

-When a man walks by you in the square muttering "sheesh" under his breath, he is not expressing exasperation after a long day's work; he is trying to sell you hashish on the DL.

-If you buy hashish from a man walking by you in the square, chances are good that you are in fact buying caramel.

-Hashish is completely distinct from "shisha", which is flavored tobacco--yeah, I thought it was called hookah, too--that young Moroccans smoke all day.

-Do not ask the organizer of your desert excursion for hashish. Even if it was...I mean is...an accident.

-When you are shopping in the souk, and the asking price is X dirham, do not pay more than one hundredth X dirham. (Babouches cost 100? My foot! (Literally.) Here's a penny.) (That is an example of a conversation the wise tourist has with the even wiser merchant.) You may be wondering, "Isn't it exploitative for us to lowball these people who survive on the selling of these goods?" Here's the answer: kind of, but not really, because there are millions of tourists who come to Marrakech every year and pay exorbitant amounts of money for low-quality lamps, leather jackets (not me, no sir), and Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl XLV Champions memorabilia. So go ahead; break the cycle of ignorant Westerners!

-If a merchant simply says to you, "I don't have snakes," he would like you to enter his store and not for one minute fear that he has snakes.

-Negotiating prices in French will not impress the merchant. It's actually still cool to be American here. So revel in your patriotism, talk loudly, and get a free Rolex*.

-Ladies: unless you want to get "hennattacked" (from Eng., literally "attacked with henna"), I advise you to keep your arms sleeved while you shop in the open-air markets. If you're not careful, you're getting ambushed by amateur beauticians and then can't really use your hands for a couple hours. This means no tea.

-Mint tea is the national drink of Morocco.* Mint Tea is also the mascot of Morocco's national soccer team.* Mint tea is also Moroccans' favorite flavor of shisha.*

What's this you read about a "desert excursion", huh? Yeah, guess what? My friend, VWPP legend Kalei "Both My First And Last Name Sound Like Places In France And Literally Are" Talwar, booked us on a trip to the edge of the Sahara, to spend Christmas Eve night at a Berber campsite. (Suffice it to say that, between me and the Berbers, the nativity scene Kalei hoped to stage wasn't a very popular idea.) There was only one way to get there: a van. A nine-hour drive across terrains and roads that heavily influenced the movie "Death Race", and twelve of us packed into an unmarked white van. Mohammed, our rather aged driver, seemed reliable (read: not senile) enough to take us all the way, but it was nonetheless a relief when Kalei faked motion sickness and we got to ride in the front seat, free of all the bumpin' and grindin' going on several rows behind; that is, until a Catalan kid out-motion-sickness'ed Kalei and maneuvered his way into the front. At this point, KT and I were forced to sit in the penultimate row, right in front of a visibly unwell Spanish woman and her doting boyfriend. If I may, just for a moment, I'd like to just say that, despite the sickness, this was the best-looking couple I have ever seen. He was the Iberian version of David Beckham, and she was like Penelope Cruz multiplied by Vicky multiplied by Cristina multiplied by Barcelona. That's why it perplexed me so when she threw up partially on me, after about three hours in this stiflingly hot wagon: I felt instinctively repulsed, yet, at the same time, fortunate for her having chosen me as the recipient of her desayuno. Quite an interesting predicament, and even though I did finally get my sweater back from the dry cleaner today, I still haven't forgotten that beautiful, if retching, face.

Oh, right, the desert. OK, so we finally pull up to this spot in the middle of nowhere and it's dark as hell and Mohammed turns the spaceship off and tells us, "Please only bring light bags." After we unload our knapsacks and backpacks and stuff, not exactly sure where we are or what we're doing, Mohammed gets back in and drives away, casting headlights over what now appears to us as a field of seated camels. (They were just chilling there. It was fucking creepy. As shit.) One by one, each of us was directed to a camel and, after a couple magic words and magic kicks to the butt, we rose to towering heights. Off to the campsite!, I guessed. The camels were all yoked together, walking in a line, each shitting on the ground that the next one had to walk through. 'Twas an ugly scene for the camels, but a tremendous expanse of sky, replete with shooting stars, kept me in awe for what seemed like an hour, thankfully diverting me from the gluteal excruciation that is a dromedary ride. (What I mean is, ya get sore.) Finally, we arrived somewhere, and I said goodbye to my new friend Camelbert. (Get it? Cheesy, I know. (Get it?))

Dinner with the Berbers. Just your basic delicious tagine, pillowy bread, and camel-esque amounts of tea. We had made friends with a delightful British couple and their four year-old legitimate angel of a son named Rowan. The five of us (Rowan less so) discussed the trials and tribulations of studying the arts in today's world and the perils of the English education system. I exchanged glances with my Spanish Vomit Queen. She hadn't even apologized for her revolting actions: how sexy is that?

Something about Morocco, or maybe just Marrakech and the desert, but it seems to be pretty ubiquitous: in December, cloudless skies mean wonderfully warm days (yay!) and debilitatingly freezing nights (boo!). After some music, dancing, and quality comet-spotting--KT and I collectively counted about 250 shooters,* and she informed me that we were near the second-best place in the world to stargaze (the first obviously being New York City (ha! AM I RIGHT!))--we adjourned to our group tent, where the sick Catalan kid, his mysterious octolingual sister and the father were snoring in three-part harmony. It was probably 4 degrees, and no, that's not in Celsius. (OK, but still like even if it were in Celsius that's still like 39.2 degrees which is still like really cold.)

So after my brief bout with hypothermia, we all awoke at 6:30 to watch the sun come up over the Sahara. It was a truly awesome sight, and for the first time in several hours we could actually see where we were and take note of our surroundings. At this time, I would just like to mention that the Berbers woke up most of the girls in time for dawn, but neglected to rouse the guys. I see how it is, Berbs. I snapped a few pictures on my Kodak disposable camera that I bought for a song in Marrakech. Literally, it wasn't even worth money, I just sang the guy a song. Marrakech Express never sounded so good.

Another trek on man's best humpbacked friend led us to the loving arms of Mohammed, and we started out on the nine-hour quest to make it back to civilization without everyone just vomming all over everyone and everything. This was briefly successful, but soon enough little Rowan would prove too weak to handle the Ouarzazate Expressway, and he finally out and said what we were all thinking: [barf]. Don't worry, he ended up fine. Everyone's hungover on Christmas.

So that was our encounter with the sands of the Sahara. To be honest, on some level, I'm a little confused as to whether or not we were actually in the Sahara Desert, because the hostel did call it a "Sahara Desert Excursion" but also it seemed like we stopped just beyond Zagora, which is... okay, whatever, I'm on Google Earth and it's pretty clear that we were in the desert. I mean, I was walking on legitimate sand. It was very desert-y. Conditions were right. I refuse to listen to what that cynical Canadian guy said to me afterward. No, definitely Sahara. Yeah, because we were on the road forever, and it wouldn't have taken us that long otherwise. Yeah...yeahhhh.

We met a ton of awesome people at the hostel, the Riad Marrakech Rouge. Really 'doe, every single guest was either interesting or German, so there was always something to talk about around the shisha table. We found ourselves mostly hanging out with Swedish engineering students, these awesome kids who spoke flawless English and taught us useful words and phrases in Swedish, such as "here is a good guy!", and "awkward underbite". We ate cheap food, played chess, and drank the national mascot. It was a blast.

The morning of my departure, I got a glass of orange juice from the square. They don't really wash their glasses. I was sick for about a week after that.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned as we continue to keep you abreast of our activities en bros, even though we're stateside...for the time being.

Great Brotain

Hey folks. This post technically counts because I am sitting at Charles de Gaulle Int'l waiting to leave for New York. Despite France's best efforts, I made it to my gate on time, as the crack security staff decided today wouldn't be a great day to show up for work. Not to sound morbid, but for all you terrorists out there, the security at CDG is currently being run by "super emergency security personnel", a/k/a the cashiers from the duty free wine store, so now's your chance! This post's another Sauce's Time Machine Experience™, which means you should sit back, relax... and prepare to find yourself in London 3 weeks ago! Being that in France, if they hear a holiday is celebrated in America they make every effort to completely ignore it (see: Halloween, Hannukah) I decided to take my talents up to London for the Thanksgiving weekend. Thus, I dragged my tired butt to the Gare du Nord at 8am on November 23rd to hop on the Eurostar. This trip actually had a dual purpose: not only did I want to enjoy some of London's finest imitation Thanksgiving fare with my aunt and uncle, but I was also visiting some special amis et amies from my high school days, headlined by none other than Brooke "I like to cook" Baldinger! BB quite graciously invited me to stay with her and her 8 (!) girl roommates for the weekend, which I accepted literally instantaneously. What can I say, Sauce loves the ladies. Well, actually, before I got to her place, I spent two nights chez my aunt and uncle, who live in Notting Hill, which is SO COOL! (UPDATE: IN THE USA NOW. I FLEW HOME.). Uma Thurman lives a block away from them, I kid you not. After getting into St. Pancreas train station, the weirdest/most pancreasy train station in Europe, I met up with Uncle Phil, who has the same name as the dude on Fresh Prince but is neither black nor old nor a Beverly Hills resident. With my uncle, I went to the Royal Automobile Cub, which is like a social club for rich old white dudes. It is located on the Pall Mall, which is a real place, and it looks like the kind of place where Sean Connery knocks back a few cold ones before banging Ms. Moneypussy. After setting a new low for the club by walking in with my Orioles hat on, I went to their fitness center, followed by the sauna/steam room, which was AWESOME. It's exactly like the scene in Eastern Promises where Viggo Mortensen gets attacked by the Chechnyans, minus all the blood/Eastern Europeans. Basically, you heat up in the hot rooms, then you can go into the steam rooms, which are so hot it is hard to breathe, and then you shower off in a giant communal room, and then you can go to the plunge pool to cool off. It's basically a massive Jerry Sandusky wet-dream scenario. What's more, afterwards you can shave in the locker room, as they provide razors/lather, and also comb your hair with some crazy English pomade. All that's missing is a little Chinese man to trim your ball hairs. Maybe I missed him. Apparently I wasn't there on a coed day. Since this is 2011, you have to let women come, so 3 days a week women are allowed at the club. And they partake in all the sauna/shower activities. With. No. Clothes. On. I'm moving to London. Enough of the one-percenter shit, though. After Thanksgiving dinner (an admirable effort by a nice English restaurant), I went off to Brooke's to spend the next 3 days. She has an awesome place, right next to Chipotle, and what's more, her and her friends like to pah-tay. I was probably drunk for 75% of that weekend. I literally don't remember the first night. What I do remember is going to this place called "Church" on Sunday (not the God place). It's a club/bar that's open noon-4 on Sundays, intended for heathens to come shitfaced, in costume, and do bad things. Brief list of activities: 10:30am: wake up, get dressed, take 9 shots. 11:30am: meet Australian professional rugby players on the Tube. They are also going to Church. One of them is wearing a full-body elastic suit designed like the Australian flag. 12: get to Church. I am in line behind 4 people dressed like Jesus. For some reason we buy more alcohol. 12:30: accosted by group of gay dudes dressed in down vests, thongs, and glitter. Narrowly escape. 1:00pm: Stripper with literally the biggest tits I have ever seen comes on stage. No idea why. 2:00pm: put on Tutu. Pose with Brooke & friends, who are also in tutus. Finish 4th beer. 3:00pm: I am dead.

I somehow made my train that afternoon, and sobered up at midnight. Folks, if you go to London, go to Church. It will make your trip. Big shout outs to Brooke and friends, who made that trip unreal. Ok, I literally am not in France anymore, but I'll probably post a couple more times. Keep the dream alive and all that. Also solidarity with AI, who is I-don't-know-where, but it definitely isn't here. Ok bye!

P.S. Vinay, hope you've enjoyed the blog! Have a great next semester!

Brosing Remarks? (Brope)

It was a dark and stormy night. ("...The milkman's car drove off the road." Anybody besides my sister remember that 90s Got Milk commercial?)

(No? Really? What were you guys doing in the 90s?)

But seriously folks, it is a blustery black night here in Bordeaux. What's more, God forgot to turn off the faucet, so it is constantly raining. Also, out of nowhere, it is bitterly cold, forcing me to double up on sweaters (increasing the likelihood of friction fires) and socks (I wear two now). On Monday I decided to get a haircut, which is the opposite of buying a hat, something I have been meaning to do since October. On the plus side, though, my host mom saw me afterwards and said, "thank you for finally doing something about that," and she made me a celebratory tarte aux pommes. Also in recognition of my good deed, she finally agreed to throw my "dry" clothes back into the dryer for a second cycle, so that I wouldn't have to keep laying them on all the radiators in the house. This sounds stupid, pedantic, obnoxious, do your own laundry you 20-year-old baby, or rude, but it is often impossible to tell if the machine is indeed a dryer, and not a fish tank.

How is everyone coping with finals? Are you drowning in work? Did you go to the cookie thing that my future roommate hosted? Can you see the Facebook event from that link? Are there too many end-of-semester a cappella concerts for you to handle? Do you secretly wish all those people voted for you instead of Anwar in the WSA elections? Is it easier for you to study a lot throughout the year so that finals aren't difficult or stressful, or wait until the last minute, realize that at this point no matter how much you study you can't conceivably do extremely well or learn an entire syllabus, so you might as well just convince yourself that you'll be fine and throw caution to the wind? Is anyone else having trouble with episodes of the Wire online?

The laptop has seen a lot of action this semester, from that time I dropped it on the stairs outside my linguistics class to that time I watched 12 Angry Men, Network, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Usual Suspects in the span of ...well, you do the math. Yo, it's not like I abstain from real interaction and choose to stay indoors and read Volcano Hands Tone's blog all the time. I may be a lot of things, but I am NOT an accro d'Internet ("nethead"), so ease up on the judgments. Here's something I bet you didn't know: I get a real life New York Times sent to my house everyday, just so I can keep up with the world the way we were meant to, in a language that I understand. And the world is so complicated right now! Not to mention awful. Crazy people are everywhere: throwing grenades in Liege, shooting Senegalese merchants in Florence, imprisoning everyone in Moscow, being named Newt, etc. Just stop all the commotion, for Pierre's sake.

Then again, there's not too much to protest in Bordeaux, other than the usual weekly protest that the entire country goes on. Some of the employees at the campus cafeteria went on strike in September, but that was awkward because nobody goes to that place anyway, so if a tree falls in a (black) forest (ham), etc. etc. I also think there was a situation with a mine not too far away from here, but it blew up ten years ago, but people are still trying to figure out, like, where the gold is. I think. Oh, and I guess students generally complain about paying off loans or some shit like that, and whenever one of those disheveled smelly grad students/corset-wearing Wiccans hands me a flyer railing against tuition hikes, I do the old Mitch Hedberg: here, I throw this away. Because let's be honest: ya'll don't even know. Like really.

You think you know, but you have no idea. You probably don't even think you know. I don't know what you think, but you know what? You thought wrong.

As the above paragraph might suggest, I'm losing most if not all of my marbles over the course of this week. You didn't ask me about finals, but I'll tell you anyway. Actually, I won't tell you. Last fall, I fell off a bike en route to my radio show, and I broke my arm, got contusions that still haven't healed, and may or may not have suffered a concussion (thanks to a text-msg consultation with human WebMD Andy Gradison, this is unlikely...we think). But did I whine about the pain and broadcast my anguish over the air to 1,000,000 listeners across the Connecticut Valley region? No. So I'm not going to play the plaintive game. However, I am going to attach a picture of my Google Calendar for this week. It should give you a picture--literally, it should--if it doesn't, then why would it say it did--(that's Eminem) (not really)--of my recent routine without me having to type out my grievances.

Well, who knows if you can read that? The point is, this guy's got a lot on the agenda. Every few hours I'll get a notification on Facebook that reads "DONE!!!" and hey, that's great! Boy, how fun is that? Taking care of everything you have to do, succeeding in the face of formidable challenges, and not missing a beat to tell the Internet about it while the rest of us toil away! Yo, and who are these people "liking" those statuses? What is going on there? If you're so happy that your friend is done with finals, why don't you guys go hang out instead of playing virtual tag? Morons.

One of the weirdest things about attending a school in a foreign language is that, for many reasons, you end up not talking so much on a day-to-day basis. What I mean is, ...I mean, you understand what I mean. I am about 10% as likely to participate here than I am at uni at home. I have almost gone whole days without talking, unless you count murmuring "pardon" as you pass by the homeless man with the two cats. That sounds mean, but my host mom assures me that every panhandler on the street works secretly for some sort of gypsy mafia ring in Bordeaux; kind of like the Freemasons, but like...really free.

Well, I don't think I should really end my side of La Vie en Bros on this relatively brour note. It's been very cathartic, and I appreciate the readers for allowing Sawse and me to plumb the depths of our souls and pour out our hearts. Enough with the toilet imagery, something I swore never to evoke all the way back in the beginning of this semester. (All I'll say is, if you want a culture shock, go to a bathroom stall in anywhere that isn't a hotel or restaurant in France. The amount of seats will astound you, and I ain't saying they got extras.) Until next time, you can catch me at the Field concert on the iBoat, beating everyone on Words with Friends, or, most likely, trying to get in just one fight with a French person before I leave.

P.S. Everyone should direct their confusion or anger over this "Recipe Exchange" virus/annoyance (not a virus, don't worry) at Zach "Snack Mattress" Attas. He invented it, he wants all of your recipes. Kill him with kindness.

Brome Stretch

Bronjour potes et putes! I hope December arrived at your doorstep with just as much bacchanalian élan as it did chez moi. How did you ring in the new month? Which of those Black Friday sweaters actually fit you? Why do I treat this blog like a family newsletter that you never asked for? Early December is a time for asking questions.

One of the questions/pleas I find myself shouting to nobody in particular these days: HAS ANYONE SEEN MY SEMESTER? I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT WENT. Seriously, folks, can it really be that in just three weeks I will be stepping onto a plane, the memory of study abroad tucked neatly into my back pocket--not disturbing the secret compartment I have sewn into my jeans for the safekeeping of Kinder Bueno Bars? It is hard to believe that day in and day out, for the last three and a half months, I have trekked out to Pessac and tried my darnedest to understand what those dressed-up people in the front of the room are saying. The Université de Bordeaux III's campus, apparently designed by an angry four-year-old, is an image I will never forget--a bastion of scholarly wisdom and reasonably priced cafeteria food. I seem to have developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome with regard to my school here, and although its inability to balance a budget of 500 euros has caused an embarrassing administrative overhaul, I think my colleagues will agree with me when I say, "UB3 is the place to be."*

On one of the other hands, the semester has certainly had its enterprises of great pith and moment, as Guillaume would say. What I mean by that is it hasn't all gone by in a blur; why, just yesterday I said goodbye to my sister, whom we'll call "Sarah", concluding a whopping six-night visit (!) to Borland. She was joined by my mother Mom, who only stayed until Tuesday morning. Despite a 24-hour period (not saying whose!) of evacuation and solitary confinement that may have been an homage to Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, the visit was barrels of fun. And barrels of wine! Literally, we went to a chateau in Saint-Émilion, got the private tour of the property, met the owner, climbed into the presses, played a drinking/"smelling" game, learned how to spell vinification, and other sweet--if you will--activities. Sarah and Mom both walked out of the place with bottles on bottles. We also hit up the Dune du Pyla--study up with this vintage LVEB post--and enjoyed the crazy jungle-forest-ocean-desert view that only this joint affords. My mom doesn't have the world's highest tolerance--not that she ever claimed to--so her wine experience was not as grapey as it could have been, but she still got a chance to get her fair share of the white stuff (that means white wine here*) and swore to my host mother never again to drink chardonnay. (Sorry, Big Sean.)

Sarah and I had a great time traipsing around the city, exploring really weird modern art exhibits, making friends with shopkeepers on my block, watching a guy who looked like Yosemite Sam perform at a jazz bar, Hoovering delicious foods as varied as chicken shwarma with fries and entrecôte ...with fries, and trying to get a patent on a Pineau drip feed. Yo, one word about l'Entrecôte: incroyable. I got in an argument last night with a French waitress (off-duty) about it, and she's all like, "I don't find the meat to be of a good quality and it is too expensive in relation to the morsels that they serve you and the line is of such a length and the women who work there are paid by how many tables they sell so they do not appreciate you and" and at some point I just tuned her out because, really, fuck ça. L'Entrecôte is like God's buffet line. It makes sense that people would want to queue up for that shit. Sorry you can't handle a little deferred gratification.

I was sad to part ways with the family, needless to blog. In fact, the weekend before last I got a little surprise visit from my dad, Dad, who flew in from a three-week business trip to spend limited-quantity but maximum-quality time in the City that Never Wakes Up. I don't want to rehash the laundry list of meals that we managed to pack into 24 hours, but let's just say that if ducks could talk, they would say, "Adam and his dad ate lots of our friends."

The ducks would also decry the abuses of the French Southwest in general, whose singular mission it is to make all parts of the duck edible, and all ducks unhappy or dead.

I would like to point out the bizarre phenomenon that is the average French body type. On the whole, Pierre and Aurélie are shockingly thin considering their relatively decadent lifestyle. This sounds extremely offensive, so let me explain.

1. Exercise. What is that? They don't have that here. The extremely small number of people you see running in the mornings in the public gardens? They are immigrants. As WSJ previously mentioned, why run when you can scoot?

2. Diet. My host mother doesn't believe in drinking water during meals. However, she strongly promotes the liberal consumption of bacon, which here is appetizingly called lardon. Also, the mayor of Bordeaux is a wheel of cheese. (Pictured below.)

3. Alcohol. I have seen a full wine rack laid bare in the span of four days. My host brother is a cross-between whoever taught James Bond how to drink, and the guy who taught that guy.

4. Cigarettes. This is an easy one. Cigs are like girls in that Beyoncé song: they run the world. The school system is organized completely around smoke breaks. You had a two-hour class? Sacré bleu, I hope you got that petite pause! Yesterday I literally saw a baby smoking two cigarettes at the same time.

Do you see what I mean? You gotta wonder how the youth stays so trim. Must be the white stuff.

Then again, they don't have Thanksgiving. Isn't that funny? You would think that the French would jump at every opportunity to stuff a bird with bread and eat foods that are healthy in theory but not in practice/compiled into a mass of indiscernible, belt-loosening sadness. In reality, we Americans don't get a lot of love for this holiday overseas. I spent my Thursday night sitting down for a meal with my old colonizers, the English. Only then did I fully realize the oppression that American Indians felt in those awkward early settlement years. When we gathered at the table for a poker game, the Brits initially didn't accept my money, and I eventually had to stop playing with them for fear that they would tar and feather me. On an occasion dedicated to putting beside cultural differences and accepting diversity, I was hounded with jeers like "bloody Yank" and "Dr. Yankenstein" and "fat". They did, however, show some sign of reconciliation by playing this vid for me. So I guess my Thanksgiving was comme ci, comme ça.

Anyway, the sun is setting on what has turned out to be a very unproductive day for me. Apart from ending my brief observation of No Shave November two days late, I can't say I've used my time effectively today. La Vie en Bros, I've come to find, is a bit of an addiction. Do you agree? The numbers say you do! Last week we hit a milestone, crossing the 300,000 pageview threshold. I know, I know, it's not Kanye Twitter figures. But thanks to our extremely advanced capabilities in social media platform web technology algorithm functions, as well as yet another shout-out from Wesleying--although we were mentioned off-handedly and I kind of fucked up tipping Melody off about a false rumor, so the article was deleted--we now enjoy the kind of visibility I could only dream about on Xanga. So thanks, Melody! And mille mercis to all of the LVEB D-vo-Ts.

Alain Juppé's college days. Bye!

Brotpourri/Brolture wars

Hey bro-natics, Uncle Sauce here again. Apologies for another week without posting; the host parents confiscated my laptop after I messed up saying Grace. This here's another catch-up post, and boy have I got some crazy shit for y'all to suce on. Well actually, there aren't any events in particular I'm going to talk about, this one's sort of dedicated to the bizarre cultural differences I've seen thus far, with some brominiscing mixed in. First of all, razor scooters. Yeah. What the fuck, France. Sixth-grade Sauce just called from 2002, and he wants his ride to school back (every day, bitches). This is the only place where I've seen full grown adults pushing around on two wheels like some sort of Never-Never Land scenario brought to life. They're everywhere- sidewalks, buses, metro- and they even fold them up to carry when they're not using them. It's seriously hilarious. I saw a woman on the metro who looked every inch the businesswoman on her way home from work, and then I saw the scooter under her arm. If it had been the U.S., I would have said to myself "oh, it's her kid's and he's over there sitting down and she's carrying his scooter for him because he's tired". No kid here though. She scootered off as soon as the doors opened, because here it's normal to scooter on the metro platform. So strange. The scooters here even have bigger wheels, because they're made for adults. As if Americans needed another reason to believe that French people are massive pussies. Although I've been told that this is becoming a trend in NYC as well, in which case I may have to dust off the ol' Laser for one last spin (the parents were too cheap to get me the real thing). Another vestige of my early adolescence which has come back and smacked me in the mouth like a Jean-Claude van Damme roundhouse kick is- wait for it- orange slices. As in, what Billy's mom used to bring to soccer games when you were 6 so the whole team could chow down during halftime and wish it would've been Kyle's mom's turn so they could have Chewy bars. For reasons I have yet to divine, our replenishment during our grueling, dirty, super-manly rugby matches is orange slices. The coach just pops them out during the huddle like it's nothing. I literally burst out laughing when I first saw it. I feel as if French society is slowly regressing back into childhood, like a mass Benjamin Button outbreak. Not that they're not delicious, but in the states you're more likely to get a Natty Light on the sidelines- none of that fruit bullshit. Enough apt cultural observations for now, though. Actually, one more. Halloween! C'mon, France! How can you not love this holiday? 1) You love candy. 2) You love literally everything else from America, including but not limited to Razor scooters, CSI, Lady Gaga, and McDonalds. 3) It's not like you don't enjoy dressing bizarrely- I see plenty of bright yellow pants and purple hair on a daily basis. So basically, what I'm saying is I was absolutely shocked on Halloween night when me and Christian "Odysseus" Lalonde left my apartment building only to realize that this country could not care less. So there was the sadness and disappointment, but also the acute embarrassment of riding on the metro for 20 minutes while dressed up as the Albanian kidnappers from Taken (we are sick people), surrounded by mostly normally-dressed Parisians. Fortunately, when I ("Nico") and Christian ("Marko") arrived at Kalei ("Jackson Pollock Painting") Talwar's apartment, we were in luck. We had somehow scrounged up enough of the ol' Halloween spirit to create the most understated, subdued Halloween party ever held. Knocking back vodka-orange-cavas with Tintin, a Real Housewife from New Jersey, a cat, Baby Spice, Salvador Dali, and a witch, while speaking in hushed tones and not daring to put on music, has to be the saddest memory I have of this semester. Despite the rape-y vibe of me and Christian's costumes, which we evidently had not considered when deciding to go to a Halloween party that was 95% girls, some people actually thought it was funny. Ok, like one person. It might have been a little over the line when we started "taking" other party guests (ransom: 1 shot). All I can say is, good thing Liam Neeson wasn't there!

Nico and Marko

Actually, to continue the bizarre U.S. vs. France motif that I've set here, we went to a literal U.S. vs. France soccer match a couple weeks back. AI even made the trip up, swelling our numbers to a whopping 12 people, which was easily 1/3rd of the entire U.S. fan population there. Nevertheless, we were at our ugly finest, chanting U-S-A at every opportunity and yelling witty barbs like "You're welcome for D-Day!" and "Your country fucking sucks!". Despite our best efforts, the good guys lost, 1-nil, which was especially painful because of the jeering 4-year-old in front of me with the French flag painted on his face. I'm serious- that little asshole got to me. No doubt he'll grow up thinking that wave he was doing all game was invented in la France. Not so, petit ecolier- not fucking so. You'd better think next time you hop on that little scooter, too. That, and when you chant the tune from "Seven Nation Army" after you score, like that's French too. Get your own song! Gahhhhhh. Alright, that's enough for now. Time for Sauce to get his beauty rest. A bientot. More bropdates later.

P.S. Meanwhile, it's almost fucking December here- the semester's coming to a close. How time flies. Hope y'all that are still reading have enjoyed keeping abreast of your favorite freres' adventures so far. A.I.'s gonna tell y'all about his malade weekend in Paris. Also, just learned how to say "dick-slap" in French- bifler (bee-flay). It's a combination of the verb gifler, "to slap", and bite, "dick". I knew I liked it here.

Brocelona

Hey kids. Uncle Sauce here. Yeah, I'm still here! Feverishly thinking of ways to entertain you! Experiencing everything there is to see and do in Paris! Forgetting that this blog exists! Just kidding, I've just been very lazy. Lot's of fun to catch everyone up on. Few weeks ago, went to Barcelona for Toussaint break. As in, "I am going Toussaint Tropez for a week in the middle of the semester, even though in France school is a joke and we have class once a week". Barcelona, for those who aren't initiated, is on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, not to far from their border with France. It's in a region called Catalonia (or Catalunya), which, disappointingly, does not mean that it is run by a council of all-powerful cats (Many of whom would, ostensibly, have been educated at the Veterinary School where I have rugby practice). That I know of. Also, Barcelona, it turns out, is siiiiiiiick! We had an awesome time. I was there with Koko "doesn't need a nickname" Fisch, Elaine "Schmelly" Cheung (sorry), Christian "My hair is gorgeous" Lalonde, Ivy "Icy" Johnson, Hannah "Grace" Eidman, and Peter "Michael" Rothe. We stayed with Koko's friend from highschool, named Ki, who is awesome, and who lives in a giant old warehouse which is now a space for artists to live. It was, I can truthfully say, the coolest living situation I have ever observed, and probably will ever see, unless they figure out a way to replace the walls with glass and put it underwater (or white sauce). It's basically become 13 little apartments on 2 floors, with these massive common areas on both floors, one of which was basically designed for large smokeouts / photography shoots, and the other being a large communal kitchen. Not that we spent a ton of time there (we spent a ton of time there.).

Temple of Sin/Our house for a week

But, we also saw and experienced a lot of Barcelona. La Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudi, who probably was drinking a lot of pineau, was truly magnificent. It has yet to be finished, because its design is truly unique/time-consuming, and also probably because Gaudi himself died during its construction because he stepped out into the street to admire it, and was promptly flattened by a truck whose driver was doing the same thing. Seriously. The building looks like a normal cathedral which God saw and decided to build a dripcastle on top of, because he had just been at the awesome beach a mile away. Parts of it are gothic, other parts look like something out of Dr. Seuss. On the inside, which also isn't finished, the columns look like they turn into trees midway up, and the branches become the supports for the ceiling. Seriously, seriously cool. We also went to the Picasso Museum, because there aren't enough museums in Paris, and definitely not one devoted to Picasso, but this one was also pretty interesting. Picasso evidently forgot what things looked like about halfway into his career, but before that he was pas mal. Also, he had this hilarious phase where he painted pottery, and the stuff looks exactly like crap I used to make at Made By You as Christmas presents for my parents. Someone probably told them they needed more art at the museum so they got their kids to throw some glaze at the china collection. At least, that's how it looks to my trained eye. We also went on La Rambla, which is very beautiful, as well as Parc Guell, another Gaudi masterpiece/pineau-induced vision. If Sagrada Familia is the church of Whoville, then Parc Guell is their little town square/mountain/performance space. It also has an insane view of the entire city.

WHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA

But probably the highlight of the trip was going to see FC FREAKING BARCELONA play on one of our last nights there. We got the tickets like, a day before, and it turns out they were ENORME. Me and Christian were sitting probably 20 rows back, and we were facing goal for 3 Barca goals, all of which were scored by Messi (game ended 5-nil. Suck it, Mallorca!). If you're reading this, Lio, nicely done.

This is where we were sitting.....

Of course, the beach was also nice- yes, it was still beach weather there, if anyone saw my previous post- although I'm still trying to forget the image of 70 year old bare breasts which has been seared into my retinas. We also went out clubbing/barring most nights, which was great- especially the Razzmatazz club, the largest in Barcelona, where we danced until literally 6 in the morning. The highlight of Razzmatazz was definitely seeing our 20-something housemate, Caesar, boogie down on the dance floor. Previous to this episode, we had thought for sure he was like a super-hetero Australian brah, because he never wore a shirt and would do pullups on this rope outside his room in front of everyone. But the way he got down on the dance floor was, may I say, flamboyant. He was completely ignoring this gorgeous Australian girl who had come to visit him, and who we had assumed was his girlfriend, because he couldn't get enough Ke$ha. Pretty drole, if you ask me. Overall, Barcelona definitely gets approval from the Sauce. Don't forget to try their cava, or the paella. A bientot! Also, AI, we should look into getting a Tumblr. Gotta give the people visual aides.

Brorgiveness / Broflections

Sauce, you don't need to apologize to anyone for not updating the blog. Our schedules are chock full and we don't always have the time or energy to share every miniscule detail of our lives with our needy fans. They need to recognize. That being said, I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank Zach Schonfeld for boosting our hits; we seem to be still riding on the coattails of the October 6 Wesleying post that brought LVEB to national attention. Since then we have counted over 25,000 unique hits*! That's more viewers than Tom Anderson has on his Myspace page, yo! (This is probably true.)

So as I was walking home from Paris yesterday, I realized something: my tastes in music have barely changed in the last dozen years. I mean, sure, I've become slightly more discerning, and I got the Pitchfork logo branded on my left buttock, and I know how many people are in Bon Iver--one, right???--but, honestly, what did I listen to before that I would dislike now? Maybe I'm asking the wrong question--literally someone please tell me how many people are in Bon Iver--but it seems like I should be accumulating some kind of sophistication as I age and get exposed to more and more music, shedding embarrassing phases à la Christian Lalonde shedding weight grâce à his miserly host parents. The truth is, there will always be a place in my heart for Bro Strings Attached.

But also Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park's 2000 chef d'œuvre. For real, people, definition of a classic. Something about a guy named Chester belting out melodrama just gets to me. And I'm not even thinking about "In the End," (although I am thinking about it right now,) which, by the way, is the eighth track on the album! Can you believe that? What current band would have the cojones to stash their single in the back like that? Really, every song brings that angsty heat I still love; sometimes I catch myself chanting: "Forfeit the game/before somebody else takes you out of the frame/and puts your name to shame." It might be an oblique reference to World of Warcraft, but hell if I care; that's the word of God right there.

Anyway, the nostalgia for prepubescence passes and I am sitting on my bed trying to kill a mosquito. It is the middle of November and there is a mosquito all up in my shit. Now, I'm not a scientist (although this guy is), but how much more evidence do we need to prove that global warming is going to kill us all--or worse, let mosquitoes survive past early fall? It's pretty easy to see why the French aren't leading the race to combat the problem; they have like a billion different terms for it: réchauffement du monde, réchauffement climatique, réchauffement planétaire, réchauffement de la planète, etc. etc. etc. Really though, France, pick an adjective and admit that the crisis exists. Just because you people drive motorized rickshaws doesn't mean you are helping the world out. The cigarettes your country smokes daily are probably as bad for the environment as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also known as the World's Worst 4/20 Ever). Also, your dogs shit everywhere, indiscriminately and en masse. Clean that up. Christ, I feel like Marie Antoinette Poppins.

Par contre, I will be honest and say that the weather this weekend was divine, the perfect occasion for me and Swag to hit the City of Lights and remind our fellow collegians how to really party. This largely resulted in waking up in the afternoon, walking for a couple of hours, collapsing into food, and drinking ourselves into an extended hypnagogic state. For the record, I managed to take care of lotsa activities in my 50 hours: I hit the Jardin/Palais du Luxembourg, the Marais, the Canal St. Martin, the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Sacré Cœur, the Bastille, the Champ de Mars, Saint Germain, a Tibetan restaurant, and a desolate street corner off the Rue Oberkampf. Damn! And I didn't even mention Friday night, when a bunch of us diehard soccer fans went to see Uncle Sam vs. Le Coq Sportif at Stade de France, an event marked less by both teams' disappointing performances than by running into Sciences-Po-Nerd-In-Residence Faye "Chauncey Billups" Phillips, who regaled me with stories of Scandinavia, an affair she is having with the President of the Louvre, and some other equally banal things that I don't remember. We had an amazing pregame dinner--literally--at our friend Koko's mom's friend's apartment. I'm pretty sure she made those madeleines. Some other people chopped tomatoes or whatever, but all credit goes to Koko and her mother for the delicious spread, and également for putting up with our "well I would hate for this bottle of Jack Daniel's to go to waste!" and other antics.

I would like to stress that, though Paris has a reputation for being expensive as all get-up, I found love in a hopeless place some pretty good deals in the Bastille neighborhood, next to where my host for the weekend Jesse "Rick" Ross-Silverman lives. Ya'll know Jules? If not, get wise. I'm talking boots that neither confine my wardrobe to "longshoreman" nor cast me as a young Nancy Sinatra, 'bout 60 euro for them joints. Additionally, I copped a sharp oxford for 15 Eazy €s. Believe when I say that when I hit the club later that weekend, I left the other mecs in the dust. Except for that one guy who shoved me. He shoved me really far.

Actually, I got pretty lucky in terms of paying for food (although I made sure, conscientious tourist that I am, to compensate with libation) both nights. Saturday, the Sauce's parents, typically referred to as MomDad, treated me, ledit Sauce, and Christian "Don't Starve Me Bro" Lalonde to an exquis dinner near the Eiffel Tower, at a restaurant appropriately named FL. (Say it out loud, idiot.) The ambience was nice, the wine was great, and even though Jamie's dad called me "Jew Boy" (only once!) it was a lot of fun to hang out with the original Sauces. Papa Sauce is literally French and put me on some good words to repérer for the future: perdrix, for example, means "partridge." Thanks.

So, yeah. Other than this painful blister I received from hours of dancing in my new Jules, this weekend was nothing but awesome time after awesome time. I'm hoping to hit up P-town once more before the end of the semester, but I don't want to raise everyone's expectations, only to have them crushed by the weight of finals and the depressing prospect of spending another pair of three-hour train rides wedged in between fellow tardy passengers, stepped on by small children and battle-rapped at by obnoxious SNCF attendants.

Morocco might be in my future? Not before a torrent of papers and oral exams! Who will prevail in the battle between lazy and grade-conscious? Find out soon...in the mean time, let's just appreciate the awkwardly nice weather. Jew Boy out; take it away, Sawse.