Fab fab weekend

Well, this week did a u-turn and ended on a marvelous note! I met my friend Justine after work at Les Pres metro station and she and I drove out of Lille and through Roubaix toward her home. She lives in a charming cottage style house that used to be a café many years ago. She gave me a tour of the home and we chatted with her mother Blandine for awhile. She is so kind and lively, just like Justine; I’d met her once before at the Van Peteghem’s home. Seeing as we were having crêpes for dinner, Justine and I went to work on the batter. They have a neat machine that sits in the middle of the table and cooks six crêpes at once; it’s so much more convivial this way rather than having the cook stand by the oven. We had a fun dinner and stayed at the table for hours laughing, finally calming down with an herbal tea around 11pm. I decided to take a little movie clip of everyone at the table and attached it to the blog. Blandine refused to let me go home without taking a jar of her apricot jam, a box of the tilleul-menthe herbal tea I love, and a plate of crepes, very sweet and motherly of her. She also asked if I would come and give her and Marie an English lesson on Wednesday evening and have dinner with them.
I also had the chance to look at Justine’s photos from her recent trips to India and Mali and they really made me want to visit there someday. She too wants to travel and is visiting the states for the first time in August. We both talked about where we hoped to go someday; because of the fascinating African literature class I took last semester, I am determined to visit Senegal someday. She would like to see Thailand. Her room is full of African and Indian artifacts, Buddhas, lamps, pictures-she even gave me an Indian robe to sleep in. We slept in and then this morning her cousin Vincent came to pick us up to go into downtown Lille for lunch at an Indian Restaurant. The food was delicious and the spices made our noses run. We spent the rest of the day walking around old Lille through the shops and chatting. It was a great day and I’m all worn out. À bientôt…