To begin a new blog about my life as the fiancée of a frenchie, I decided it was only appropriate to be entirely cliché. So I have added my favorite picture of the la tour eiffel.
In January 2006 I met Régis in the mall at les Halles outside le FNAC for our first date. In all my American glory I actually wore my mom's vintage cowboy boots tucked into jeans. Luckily, he overlooked my tendency to hop on the bandwagon of trends where I don't have to actually buy anything new. We went to all the typical 11eme hot spots, a Vietnamese restaurant where two can dine for less than 20 euros and an Egyptian hookah café. It was a particulary warm day for January and since Régis has a tendency to wear only a corduroy blazer even in dead winter, he needed someone to keep him warm when it turned cold in the evening. An american girl wearing a puffy coat was more than happy to help him and we shared our first embrace on rue de Belleville.
Not wanting the evening to end, we decided to meet up later at the Mix for Erasmus party. Haven for all American students studying abroad who have been told "everybody goes there" when in actuality, everyone who wants to end the night drunkenly making out goes there. But that's another story. So at Erasmus party, in all it's sweaty, body-swaying glory, we had our first kiss. All due to his inability to correctly pronounce English words.
The bet: If he could correctly pronounce 'deep-pan pizza' he would get a kiss. After a few (about 40) tries I decided it was close enough.
The next day we met at la tour eiffel where Régis waited over an hour for me, since I can never seem to figure out how long a metro trip actually takes. Isn't it supposed to be 2 minutes per stop? While waiting on his new foreign interest, he snapped this photo and sent it to me as a memoir of our date. He suprised me with ice skating on the eiffel tower. Although I'm a horrible ice skater and we were surrounded by 20 five year olds with their parents watching from the side, yelling "Fait attention, cheri!"... I'm going to have to say it was still somehow magical.
After that point we were inseperable for 3 months until I had to return to down-home Indiana to finish my last year of university. He spent last summer barbequing with my family in the mid-west and traveling with me to visit my brother in Florida (his first trip here ever). I returned to Paris for Christmas and New Year's Eve with his family, and the last day I was there he proposed.
I'll try to keep whining about the long distance to a minimum, but I do plan to chroncile the difficulty of a cross-cultural relationship with a sea in between.
Until, of course, I move back to Paris and become 'une petite femme francaise' [a little french wifey], as one of my french girlfriends suggested I was starting to resemble. I made quesadillas and guacamole (my specialties) for the fiancé's party and continued to make them throughout the night. She slipped over and whispered "Wow, Brandi, tous les amis de Régis doivent etre vraiment jaloux! Tu es la parfaite petite femme francaise." [All Regis friends are probably so jealous, you're the perfect lille french wife!] I'm not quite sure how I feel about that statement.
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