"We Are the Power Rangers of Words"

Friday night, (my first Friday night in France!) I finally met my language partner, Christelle! (The goal of the language partner program is to form a relationship with a French student in order to improve our French while also helping our partners with their English skills.) I already love her! Our first conversation was so wonderful, in fact, that by the time we realized that we were hungry, all the wine and most of the chips were gone! Mais c'est la vie. We exchanged numbers, and then we walked through the city together, talking about our favorite music and films, and discussing the Golden Globes, various French cultural practices, slang, and week-end hotspots. She accompanied me to the Monoprix (a bit like Target, but with a small supermarket downstairs) and helped me pick out a cadeau for my host mom. Then we met up with other students at an outdoor bar for some wine and conversation. What a great time we had! I also met one of Christelle's friends, Frédéric, and the three of us had some super lingusitic-heavy conversations about the origin of the term "hot dog" and the purpose of piglatin (good question). They had never heard of this "secret" language, and I had the best time trying to explain it to them in French. They caught on super quickly, practicing with the names of the various restaurants surrounding us: Urgerbay Arbay. Bon travail! At one point, Frédéric asked me (in English): "And Piglatin, people write books with this? The rappers sing like this?" As funny as it was, those are very good questions! For the French, "secret" languages in which letters or syllables are reversed (like French verlan) are often used in rap lyrics and other aspects of pop culture. It was cool to be able to speak a little bit of English with them, too. I found it very interesting that Christelle speaks English with an American accent while Frédéric speaks it with a British accent. He says it's more "posh" that way. :) All in all, an awesome night. I think Christelle put it best when she said: "We are the power rangers of words."