the art of the soirée

This past week, I realized I went to an unusual number of dinner event type things (by unusual I mean three). And they were all so nice!

Thursday was Halloween of course. I actually don't usually do that much for the holiday (sorry to some of our readers our there!). Growing up, we would dress up sometime but also my mom didn't like us to go trick-or-treating. Before we would go to this fun event at my church. When I got older though, I was allowed to go with friends, but it didn't have the same spark I feel as it had for them. Nevertheless, I do find the aesthetics and excitement fun now that I'm older! Of course, however, it's different in France. Apparently it's only started being a bigger deal in the last decade or so and even that is mainly commercial. I saw some kids dressed up! But I feel like trick-or-treating must be arranged within a building or community, especially since housing here is tricky to enter (like many codes and locks).

Anyways, my friend Katie had a dinner thing at her house because her host mom was gone for a bit. It was a very chill event and there were also decorations which was sweet. Seeing different people's host families' homes is so interesting! They're all so well decorated and so French. I really like the French style of interior design. It usually feels a bit eclectic but also classy. After the dinner and some interesting photos (Addam's Family style??) most people split. I stuck around with Katie because she'd been talking about going to what she refers to as "the sketchy underpass". I fully supported this dream of hers so we did end up going there. It's actually not that sketchy but it didn't work out exactly because there were several people sleeping there so we couldn't take photos (which was the point). Katie's costume was a character from Killing Eve, and apparently the sketchy underpass was featured in an episode of the show. We were able to get some pics in anyhow, just not directly in there. Overall I had a really fun night! Halloween in Paris nonetheless :-)

the salon of katie's place

i was the grandma in this addam's family rendition

Katie acting and me just standing

Friday, I ended up having dinner with Malika at her home. THIS was an interesting night because it was dinner with us, Malika's host mom, and two of the building neighbors. I really like Malika's host mom because she's really nice and cute (she's older but I don't know what age). She also gave me a jacket she couldn't wear! For dinner it was a full on affair with apéritif, first course, main course, and dessert/cheese. We do that at my home too sometimes but usually it's a condensed version sort of. The other neighbors were truly interesting characters, and I felt better participating in the conversation than I normally do :-0. One funny story from someone was that she literally lets her parrot roam free in the apartment?? Like no cage at all. It was also interesting seeing how the women interacted. I mean, you could talk about somewhat controversial topics (mainly politics) and people would disagree and it could get heated but in the end everyone is still friends. You could really see how the different people fell on the political scale (like more liberal/conservative) but at the same time hearing their backgrounds, certains stances made more sense. I was glad to have been able to come!

Saturday night, we had what we call a family dinner at Deirdre's home. Right now is a popular time for host families to be gone because there are various holidays. So her family was gone and we had a belle soirée. I genuinely enjoyed the company of all the people there, so it made for a good evening :-) I still am not a wine fan but I do find other drinks tolerable (but don't mention the wine thing to French people).

la famille ! (also sorry the quality is bad... I ripped this off katies insta bc I didn't have it)

Sunday was just a relaxed day where I hung out with Ejona and got work done. And the week since then has been relatively calm as well. I've been doing a lot of babysitting stuff though. Monday and Tuesday I did my regular babysitting for Emma. But Emma's mom told me about another family that needed help just this week. They're visiting from New York apparently so I'm doing that today and tomorrow. The place they're staying in for the time is insanely nice. It's pretty cool how many super nice Paris apartments I've gotten to see so far! This one just has a lot of art everywhere. In addition, today I met with a mom and her kids that I might help out on Fridays.

Another fun thing I did Monday was go to a poetry reading event. I went with two girls in the program, Emma and Lucy. Both are super talented artist and also write poetry. Although I like a lot of art forms, I've never been a poet so it always impresses me. Both of them read at the place, which I thought was so cool. The other pieces were also good, some more interesting than others. There was quite a bit of singing/instrument playing. The guest reader did piano stuff but an interesting element was that there was this lady in all white doing some interpretiveish dancing along to his reading/playing. One girl was super drunk and spoke loudly during performances which wasn't very polite. When she read.... it was off a text message she'd sent. I definitely want to go back and try to find more events like that. It's like you can participate in night life but in a more lowkey way which I think is more my style.

and here's some loose photos for your viewing pleasure :-)