Midd reception

Tonight was the Middlebury year-end reception at the Centre Madeleine. Finally we got to taste where all our tuition money is headed... fancy catered cocktail receptions. The reception was for students (grad and undergrad), host families, and professors, so the center was packed with people. And food. For starters, the caterers just kept pouring out champagne. Not cheap stuff either. Tasty champagne, although in short, round glasses that made them super-susceptible to spillage (I and 3 of my friends were victims). Midd also offered us lots and lots of hors d'oeuvres, including a mushroom made entirely of salami, lots of finger foods (including FISH EYES which I dared to taste...very salty and not much to my liking), and yummy yummy merengues and minipastries. The room was mostly filled with grad students and elderly women, so us Midd juniors spent a lot of time near the food. Well worth it.

I went to the reception with Mme. Beguin...I'm not sure what time she planned on leaving, but she said she wanted to go early to go to a store nearby. The Center is about a 15-20 minute drive, so I showed up in her room at 5:30 (6 o'clock reception) to find her half-dressed with the baby lying on the bed. She looked up at me surprised, said the baby was still there and asked what time I was thinking about leaving. Then she put a white shirt over her dark green bra and asked me some questions which I can only assume had to do with the fact that you could see everything through the shirt, but I have no idea. So she changed. And the baby cried. And then she decided to call the mama, to encourage her to get over to the appt. so we could leave. We left quite late, but I got to hold the baby for a while, so I wasn't disappointed. Gaspard has grown so so much and he looks like a little prince now in his button down shirts and hand-knit sweaters. Apparently he's developping a personality now, and Mme. Beguin used the adjectives impatient and mischievous to describe him. Unfortunately she talks so fast when she talks about him that I have trouble following. I also don't know much baby vocabulary, so trying to say that he can now hold his head up on his own (a development since last time I saw him) was nearly impossible to communicate.

Mme. Beguin spent the first few minutes of the car ride babbling about the baby, then proceeded to politics. I would have thought that she'd be excited and content for once, but Paris hasn't stopped rioting since the elections and another manifestation was planned for this evening, so she went crazy ranting about the left in France, how they can't get themselves together and how people should be allowed to work and to make as much money as they'd like. She looked over at me at this point and noted, "We wouldn't want a situation like the United States, but people have the right to work hard and earn big salaries and buy yachts if they wish." This whole rant was provoked by the fact that the French press has had nothing to talk about during this lame-duck period, and they've been all over Sarkozy for taking a secret few day vacation on a friend's yacht in Corsica (as far as I can tell from my 10 minutes of news I watch daily while working out). Sadly for France Sarkozy's vacation has been the headline since the election ended. That and some drama about a swimmer. Alors. I also got some family gossip in the car ride...Jean (my host brother) and Josephine (his cousin/17 yr. old girlfriend) broke up. And from the way she put it, it sounded like she broke things off. Quel drama! Apparently Jean is quite sad, since he lives at his university and coming home to visit her was one of the highlights of his sad, boarding life. I can't figure that kid out...he is moodier than a teenager (he basically is one though, since French boys don't grow up). He snaps at his family, then sulks, then says something nice, then goes back to sulking and sighing. Alors.