Truth and fiction

Today I had a conversation with Patel and a guy from Benin about how Patil acts around his friends and how he treats his enemies- a conversation about something personal and not purely sociological—success! Furthermore, I understood both of their heavily-accented Frenches! (for the most part).

It’s such an odd mix at the Catholic center on Wednesdays….there’s us two Americans, Hannah and me, then Patel from India and a whole bunch of people from Subsarharan African countries…I keep trying to get closer to guest speakers because of my pitiful imperfect French that benefits from being as close to the speaker as possible, then remember that half the other people here are furrners too, then remember they’ve all been here longer and often speak French at least part of then time in their own country, or at least something resembling it. There’s a guy from Camaroon who must speak French at home, because I can’t imagine doing the things he does to it if he didn’t pick it up as a real dialect.

We had a guest speaker tonight- who wrote a book I bought and read (most of) my first month here! (small world) It’s called Femmes, Aimez vos Maris (wives, love your husbands) and it goes through a lot of Catholic stuff about love, marriages, and baby carriages I’ve already read…but he talks a lot about how women were dominated for a long time and things are getting better now, but now we’re so afraid of being dominated again that we end up trying to make everything completely equal and end up trying to behave like men and end up pushing them away and making them feel useless…Things to ponder. J. doesn’t think this is happening yet…but we’ll see….

Things I learned from Hugh Dollié:
- Couples that pray together are virtually indestructible (rock on!)
- Praise your husband for making dinner, even if he burns it, otherwise he may never try it again.
- Women are on average smarter than men
- However, there are more “super- genies” and “super- débiles” chez les hommes
- Women tend to accord a point per present received, regardless of the size, whereas guys afford much more “credit” for “big” presents (J. holds that it is more quality or usefulness that matters.) i.e. women tend to value quantity or frequency of presents and guys value quality
- Conversely, guys tend to value quantity of sexual relations more and women tend to value quality more.

Things I learned from watching TV this morning:

- When throwing a party, knock before you go into the bathroom to retrieve a bottle of champagne from the bathtub. You never know who your boyfriend might be kissing in there.
- When a girl suggests that she, unlike some girls, isn’t as “complicated,” she’s after one thing and one thing only.
- If you’re Catholic, try not to be homosexual, because the Pope has made his feelings quite clear on this manner. This can be accomplished by sleeping with your gay friend, if you think you might be a lesbian. (note- if you do this, make sure you don’t later invite him to the same parties as your mom’s gay friends. See first point.)
- In addition to the pope’s views on premarital sex, it is ok for conscientious Catholic teenagers to disregard general church teachings on respecting your parents and other authority figures and loving your enemies (unless deliberately hitting them on the nose with a basketball and sending them to the hospital can be interpreted as “loving.”)
- My Catholic, swing dancing, singing friend C.K. from Cleveland has a long- lost twin sister playing a teenage girl on French daytime television! (ok, I think it looks like her)