Where was I? A night out.

So some may have noticed that I failed to write an entry yesterday. Yes, despite saying that I would write every day, I missed one. Well, my explanation for where I was will also serve as interesting fodder for today's musings.

I have two older brothers in Paris. No, Earl and John didn't move here. I have two surrogate older brothers here - two brothers who are friends with my parents who have more or less adopted me as their little sister for my time here. I see Damien a few times a week and he never fails to provide extensive teachings in both French language and French culture. Last night was no exception. Damien and his best friend, Stephane, along with a cameo appearance from the other surrogate older brother, Gregory, showed me what a typical night out is for a Parisian.

We started at a local bar/cafe with an 'apero.' Short for aperetif, it is really just the name for whenever you have a drink by itself, without a meal and generally before a meal. The French are constantly having an 'apero.'

After our apero, we headed to this very trendy Asian restaurant where we started with yet another apero before ordering our food. Menus, I've found, provide a special linguistic challenge. The trendy Asian menu at our trendy Asian resto was worse than usual. I did a go-with-the-flow kind of thing and ordered whatever sounded cool. I ended up with some sort of crab cake served in a shell followed by what can only be described as pad thai. Not too bad actually. After we finished our bottle of wine - a must at any French meal - we proceeded to dessert and coffee.

Eating is definitely not something the French take lightly. There is a ceremony surrounding food/cooking/eating that is not to be skipped. You can always tell in a restaurant who the tourists are by how they treat this essentially French practice. Simply, tourists are always the ones to eat and leave the most quickly.

Anyhow, after our lengthy and actually quite enjoyable meal, we headed to an uber chic hotel bar (think: W Hotel style) for drinks, no longer called 'apero' because of course we're too close after the end of a meal. After growing tired of that place, we hopped into a cab to our final destination of the evening, an absolutely packed night club. There we danced with hundreds of our closest friends and of course had more drinks - champagne no less, which really isn't only for special occasions in France.

All in all, an educative and thoroughly entertaining night out. But my thought at blogging when I got home from whatever outing Damien invited me out for at 7pm was obviously not to be.