In Which I Acquire an Indian and Learn About Cricket

After a fun-filled day of class, a two hour walking tour, and a two hour long wait at the phone store, I arrived back at my room around 8pm.

I wanted to pick up my room and start putting things away before I ate some dinner, so I went downstairs to discover the "trash room".  It was a disgusting place btw.

Upon leaving the trash room, I encounter two Indian men and I say politely "bonjour."

My feminine wiles are too much for these men and they want to talk to me more.  The one guy's name is Kashif and he has lived in Bordeaux for 5 years studying business and working at a restaurant.  He will turn 21 in November and asks if I will help him with his English sometime.  I say that of course I will (because I have already explained that I am from America).  He asks for my phone number to meet up sometime and I once again embarrassingly don't know it.  He says he has to go out now to buy some ingredients for the dinner he is making with his friends and asks for my room number so he can come up and put his number in my phone when he returns.  I give it to him because he lives in my building and FRIENDS.

He comes up a little while later and we talk about some things and he puts his number in and I text him so that he has mine (whatever it is).  Then he asks if he can bring me some of the food they're making.  Why would I pass up delicious homemade Indian food?  Answer:  I wouldn't.

Maybe 30 or so minutes later he comes back with a plate of food and a glass of coke.  I'm not certain what I am supposed to do now because I can't just take the plate from him and leave, plus he's nice and talks a lot.

So I offer him a chair at my (now actually useful) table.  He says "can I go get my dish and eat with you because I'm soooo hungry."  I say "Yeah that would be okay" because I like having people to talk to.

Like 10 minutes later he comes back with his own plate and I've moved some things around so he can actually eat at the table.

I think we sat here for probably two hours before I told him I had to go to sleep.  The last bit was watching cricket matches on my laptop so I could learn how the game works.  He was a cricket player on the under-19 French national team until he got injured last year.  He's hoping he can play on the team next year.

After it was clear that I couldn't eat any more of my food because he gave me a portion identical to his own like a fool, I explain that I am a tiny person and that his food is really good but it's too much.  He didn't seem to understand this for a very long time.  I kept telling him that yes his food was delicious (he wants to open a restaurant after he graduates with a business degree) and he was very confused about why I wasn't eating all of it.  He let me keep the plate it's on until tomorrow so I can eat it for lunch.

Kashif taught me all about cricket, and we are going to meet up tomorrow night so he can show me his favorite places in Bordeaux.  But did I mention how much I know about cricket?  He doesn't speak very good English, and my sports French is rough so we had a lovely Creole dialogue trying to figure out what the other person was saying.

For all you Americans, here is how you play cricket:

1.  There is a coin toss, the team that wins the coin toss gets to decide if they want to "bat" or "field" first.
2.  The team that bats first keeps batting until they are 50 over the ball.  I'm still not certain what that means but it took me about 10 years to get that sentence out of him.
3.  When you bat, you cannot hit the whiffel or you will be out.  Every player but one person on the team can be out at the same time and won't be able to bat the rest of the game.
4.  If the ball you just hit goes past the boundary you gain 6 runs.  Every player also gets 6 balls thrown at him total.
5.  The person who throws the ball talks with the captain beforehand about how he's going to throw so the captain can line up the fielders accordingly.
6.  You don't take turns batting and fielding.  One team does all possible batting, and then their "run" score is the target score for the other team.
7.  The other team bats (and btw the person who threw the ball before also gets to bat) and tries to beat the target score.
8.  You win when you have the higher score.

Also, if you are fielding and you hold the ball longer than 10 seconds then something bad happens to your team.  I don't know what.

I am actually going to probably go to sleep now because I did too much learning today.