I apologise

When you’re a poor foreign student it’s great to get free stuff. One of the differences I’ve found between French university life and Australian university life is that here you actually have to buy clothes. In Sydney you can live off free T-shirts for at least 2 weeks without washing any. However here there are still ways to obtain stuff for free. For example forgetting to tell friends that they left food at your place. It’s also good when 3 of your friends go away for the weekend leaving you behind with all the food they think may go off before they get back. Another hot tip: make friends with people who brought so many pairs of shoes that when one is slightly too big they can afford to give it away and people who buy 4 euro dresses without trying them on. In the past week or so I’ve managed to collect the following items: a tin of lentils, half a bag of curry powder, half a box of brownie, half a loaf of brioche, a capsicum, a tub of crème fraîche, a pair of shoes, a yoghurt, almost a whole garlic, almost a whole box of hot chocolate, a purple dress. Sure I may only be one step away from dumpster diving, but I promise I will never cross that line.

Moving on, this weekend was Easter. Back home when I pictured Easter in France I imagined hanging out with a whole lot of French people, maybe having some kind of civilised meal, possibly going to a French Church, eating chocolate eggs, maybe even painting some real eggs, etc etc. Instead I spent my weekend with Americans, didn’t eat or see one piece of chocolate, did walk past a church at one point but never went in, and ate nothing but pizza. I also realised today that I may have committed each one of the seven deadly sins over this weekend alone. I feel bad that this happened over Easter, but at least I’m being honest. So here are my confessions..

Lust: On Saturday we went to a waterpolo game. I’ve never seen so many almost naked French men. And I know I wasn’t the only one having bad thoughts.
Gluttony: Alcohol. Sigh. Both Thursday and Saturday nights. Lots. (According to the photos anyway… I have no memory to back that up)
Greed: I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as much pizza as I did tonight. That was ridic. Probably wouldn’t be so bad if we hadn’t eaten all that pizza on Friday as well. And fries. I’m never eating again.
Sloth: After going to bed at 6am on Sunday morning and getting up who knows when, I think I spent all of Easter Sunday watching DVDs and lying on beds. I didn’t leave the second floor of my building.
Wrath: I think I got pretty angry on Saturday night and started yelling at people because I was bored. Why am I such a horrible person?
Envy: I am so jealous of all the trips people have been planning. I NEED TO GO SOMEWHERE. I’m also jealous of people who have cars here, and people who are best friends with people who have cars here.
Pride: I don’t really understand this sin. Is it to do with vanity or self-esteem or what? I wasted a lot of money on makeup on Friday. Also I was pretty proud of the daisy chain I made today in that field of flowers where a donkey was pulling along a cart of children, followed by a lamb just wandering behind. Wow that really was Easter.

The good news is, I don’t think I sinned at the art gallery. (I can just hear Christian [linguist]s saying, “actually the good news [which is the meaning of the word ‘gospel’, from the Old English ‘god-spell’, a calque of the Greek word ‘euangelion’] is Jesus Christ and his resurrection”. Fair point, but did you really need that many brackets and quotation marks? P.S. If I read one more book or hear one more talk in which the meaning of the word ‘gospel’ is explained I may actually cry. Please just assume we already know. Please?)