You have to promise never to tell anyone...

About Ghostwriter!* (Kudos to my friend The 7th Grade Poet for reminding me that this show existed.)

If you don't know about this show, you were obviously not alive from 1992 to 1995, or maybe your parents just didn't restrict you to public television viewing the way mine did, but I was totally the target audience for this show at ages 7 to 10. Like, I totally believed in Ghostwriter. At the age when most kids were writing Dear Diary, I was writing Dear Ghostwriter, I feel sad. Please find out if Shane likes me? (If I were not in France, I would find my old diary and pull a direct quote, but I swear that is not far off.) Also, I kept a casebook where I would write down evidence (of what? I have no idea, I seemed to think there were potential mysteries to solve) and interview questions, in case I ever found anyone to interrogate. Plus I totally bought one of those pen-on-a-string necklaces that Jamal would give you when he made you promise never to tell anyone about Ghostwriter. Oh, Jamal.

Classic Ghostwriter moment. Jamal was so cool for having that computer!

I think I just felt like I had a lot in common with the Ghostwriter crew. They were growing up in the mean streets of New York in mostly middle-income families, I was growing up in the White Bread suburbs of Vancouver, WA; Gabby and Alejandro had to work really hard in their parents' store, I really wished my parents had a bodega for me to work in; they used a computer that pretty much only displayed large text on the screen, we had a computer for word processing; sometimes Samuel L. Jackson would guest star as Jamal's dad, I have a dad.

Also, there was this one episode where Gabby steals money from the till at her parents' store to buy this coat she wants because her friend tells her she can say there's something wrong with it and get a refund. But it was on sale and there is a sign that says NO REFUNDS ON SALE ITEMS and then she's screwed because she didn't read the sign at first and then she's out fifty (of her parents') bucks. Anyhow, it really reminded me of the time I was in Fred Meyer with my mom (when I was like 5) and I found this broken porcelain animal on the ground (I think it had fallen off the shelf) and I picked it up and took it home. But then I realized that I had stolen it (!) and was so overcome with guilt that the next time we went grocery shopping, I took it back and put it in the same spot on the floor of the same aisle. Gabby and I were pretty much the same person.

If you have as much free time as I do (and you shouldn't), take the time to check out some videos, they're pretty amazing. And then wonder to yourself, who decided to make Ghostwriter look like a floating period with two eyebrows right on top of each other?

*¡Fantasma escritor, en español!

I had plans last night!

Last week, I had my work coordinator leave my phone number with the high school so that the language assistants there could (if they wished) call me and be my friends. You see, I'm the only primary school language assistant in my town, and although my host family is great, I'm a bit isolated from the world of 20-somethings. Mostly because I don't think it exists in Flers. Anyhow, I had heard tell of these mysterious "other native language assistants" who worked at the "middle schools" and "high schools," so I decided to investigate. And by investigate, I mean ask my coordinator if they truly existed, and if so, how I might contact them. And thus we arrive at yesterday afternoon, when I was trying to leave the house again to (once again) set off in search of the elusive hip hop class and its potential promise of registration.

The phone rang. My host mother answered and you cannot imaging my surprise when she said it was for me. It was Nela (though I didn't know it then), the Spanish language assistant at the high school, and she invited me to dinner at her apartment, with all of the other assistants. It sounded too good to be true! Would I really meet four new people, all in one night, all vaguely my age and doing the same kind of work I was? Oh, life was too sweet. I hurried off to find my dance class, which I did (eventually) and communicated (after a long wait) with the teacher, who told me to come the following Wednesday. I could totally do that.

That evening, Nela and Andrea (German) came and picked me up in a car! And to think, all this time I've been walking everywhere! We got to their apartment, right by the high school, just as Samantha (British) and Hannah (German) were arriving on foot. We said our hellos and went inside. It was kind of ridiculous how easily we all fell into conversation with each other, and in French, which of course is none of our native language. We ate dinner and drank cider and griped about our problems with the program and laughed about the errors that students made in each of our respective languages. It was absurdly fun. Just look at us! We're already taking pictures of all of us together with one person whose in the photo holding the camera!* We're so adorable and diverse! BFFs, obvs.

Around 11:30, we decided to go out and see if anyone was still awake in Flers, though we highly doubted it. The streets were, as we had imagined, pretty empty, although we did get verbally accosted by some gentlemen outside a bar that we decided not to got into (but whyever not?), and Andrea suggested that we all insult them in a different language. Unfortuanately, I was the only one who followed through.

We came to one bar that seemed pretty happenin', but decided that the animal-print bench seating was not so much our style. The bar was called the Why Not? Like, literally, no translation. We could think of a few good reasons. So we carried on, undiscouraged, and found La Taverne, a much better scene (in my opinion), with normal tables and plenty of room in back. And thus commenced my first night out in Flers. It didn't last long, as we had already been eating and talking and drinking for several hours, but it was important. It meant something. Plus, the girls who ordered cocktails totally got glow-in-the-dark sticks in their drinks. We only stayed for one round, and then made our way home. As I was being accompanied to my house by my four new friends, we came across this little treasure:

Translation: PRIVATE CLUB, The clientele who come to this club must

be accompanied by a person of the opposite sex.

This sign was outside of (what seems to be) the only discoteque in Flers. I'm assuming they made this rule because they were getting too many desperate male clientele, but come on! Really? Andrea made the point that it would have been no problem for us to go back to the bar find some people of the opposite sex to accompany us, but why would we want to? Needless to say, the adventure of the Discoteque lies ahead, but I went to sleep last night with visions of friendship bracelets and toenail painting dancing through my head.

*We actually took five of these pictures. One for each of our cameras.