meetin the neighbors

today we took part in our second expat meal, this time a lunch hosted by lucie and peter. lucie cooked all morning, serving up a proper lunch with dessert and all. or pudding, as brits apparently call all dessert. i thought it was lucie just sort of generalizing at first, but we asked about it and apparently their word 'pudding' does not refer to the tasty jell-o type thing, but instead anything sweet that one eats following a meal. strange, eh? but in any case, today an english couple and an english woman and her daughter came over for lunch, and a few nights ago lucie, peter, alex, and i all went over to an elderly expat couple's house for dinner along with an older american expat woman and a young english couple. it's very interesting to see the type of networking/bonding that goes on among english speakers living here, and it's certainly something i can understand wanting to do. most of them said that they really didn't want to seek out other foreigners, but that it just sort of happened. of course in terms of learning the language it would be good to mix with the locals, but in terms of empathy and simply getting by in a foreign land i think it makes tons of sense to find others like you. if i hadn't had anais in germany i don't know what i would have done. and she's french! it's funny being around so many brits here though, alex and i feel like we sort of fit in, but still have another layer of foreign-ness to fight through. it's entertaining though, and let's us learn things about english life as well. hmm, i'm not sure what else i was going to update about, so i think i'll go take a shower!