oh la la!

So I have finally received word from my French friend. Her name ends, not surprisingly, in "ine" as do all good French names that I have heard. She actually uses the expression "oh la la!", I always thought that was a myth. It is not. I already mentioned how she lived with me for a couple of months on a post-doc situation and then when I was over visting Old Europe (tm Rumsfeld), she escorted me about, translating and ordering us wine and smoking cigarettes. I love her and miss her and had not heard from her in many months. While she was here, she lived on only coffee and cigarettes and American beer, as far as I could tell. This is why she was like, 90lbs or something crazy like that. The year she was here, there was some serious March Madness going on in this college town because the team had reached the finals. We had perhaps consumed a large quantity of beverages and the main street downtown was crazy crowded with cars and people. It was like you see on those Police Video shows where college kids riot after winning a big game (only of course, there was no riot here, just thousands of happy shiny people out and about at 10pm on a weeknight). My favorite memory of my little French Fry (aside from the turtle incident) is her and I holding hands and running down the middle of the street while cars were at a standstill in the biggest street party ever and we were high-fiving any/everyone. Everyone was caught up in this crazy energy and laughing and I have never seen so many people in one place in this town. We would stop and drink our beers we had hid in our coats with strangers in the middle of the street and we ended up running from 15th street all the way to 6th. We got a beer at the brewery and ran back the way we came, high-fiving all the way. I had to teach her how to high-five on the fly, apparently it is not done in France. She kept missing people's hands and laughed each time. I will never forget how much we smiled that night and hugged and held hands and she was saying 'oh la la!" all the way there and back. It was the best night. I think she maybe even fell in love with me a little, during that time. She has a new house now with her girlfriend and they both are college professors in a French college town and I doubt they have March Madness there, but I hope when that time of year comes around, she remembers holding my hand and laughing for blocks and blocks. I know I do.