Last week my friend Ashley invited me to an event at the French Cultural Center. She speaks a little English but she’s not fluent and she invited me over the phone so it was really hard to understand her and I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t know what to wear or where we were going, I just agreed to meet her and then she would take me wherever it was that we were going. PTL that she ran into my former roommate ‘R’ and invited her too, so I had another friend to share this experience with.
Fast forward to last night…We met at 6:30 and got on the bus towards downtown. Things were great until the bus turned a direction that we didn’t want to go, so we got off and walked about ½ mile to the club. Remember that I still had no idea what we were doing. I expected to see other foreigners at the French Cultural Club but I think I can actually say that the ONLY French person in there was the event organizer. There weren’t even other white people…we were it!
We checked out this art exhibit that took 5 minutes and then we sat while she chatted with some of her friends until Ashley suddenly stands up and says ‘the lecture will start soon so we’d better go’. She took us up to this rooftop with a stage set up and we sat for a while until the band came out!! It was a local band that sang Arabic type music and did a little cultural dancing so it was different, but they were actually really good and we enjoyed it a lot. The entire thing was in French and Arabic, so we really had no idea what was going on...we didn't even know when it was time to leave!
I'm still shocked that we went to the French Cultural Center and there were no French people! But I guess now I know a good place to meet lots of nationals from the Sandbox.
The very next day I went with some girls to meet some people at the German Cultural Center. Using my deductive reasoning skills, I should have suspected that the German Cultural Center would the same way, but I was busy that day and didn't even think about it. So when I arrived, I was, again, a little shocked that there were no German people...well, there were a few guys, but they were definitely in the minority. Seriously, the Sandbox does something to your brain, I think it takes the logic out. Maybe that's why there's no logic used around here!
