I just found out tonight that Colette is 75 years old. That blew my mind. My mom had asked me how old she is and I said that I haven't asked her because that's rude, but probably about 55. Based on the way she looks, how lively she is, and that her oldest grandkid is 14...even that seemed a little old, though....I guessed she was about 55, but definitely not over 60. You know she plays soccer with her grandkids? And I was mistaken, they are not her grandkids, they are her GREAT grandkids. She is an inspiration for health. I've been running every day, but when she was my age she probably scaled Everest or something, she's so lively for her age. She sews all her own clothes, she cooks elaborate meals… she does everything. She said it's because she has a good doctor, and the doctor told her that she should always drink a glass of good wine with dinner for her health. Then she told the doctor she would do better than that, she would have TWO glasses of wine every night. And now I know why she does that.
I found out something else today, too--I found out that I have been doing the French kisses wrong all this time. Let me tell you about how much of a social retard I am in France. I just found out about this yesterday. So last weekend when we went out with those French gents, we introduced ourselves (of course I said "I follow Pam" in French because I'm dumb, and then corrected myself and said "Je m'appelle Pam") THEN I proceeded to kiss them on the cheek as we do here, and with each of the gents they said "pardon" while I was doing it as if we messed something up (I tried switching sides, still I got a "oops! pardon") . I had no idea what it was until yesterday and I found out that you are supposed to actually touch cheeks to each other and kiss the air. I thought you just put your face nearby and kiss the air, so apparently they think I'm incredibly uncoordinated and cannot even touch their cheek to mine. And if you think Iºm kidding, apparently they talked about how I cannot "faire les bises" amongst themselves the next day...that's how bad it was. But at least I'm not as bad as Bradie (who they also talked about)...that little skank kisses everyone right one the cheek! She didn't know that you just touch cheeks and kiss the air, so she's been laying big smackers on everyone, including her host mother, including men in the military…. Yes, those boys had a good laugh at our expense.
