Well folks, I’m back at my old shenanigans. I found a group of people to start a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with. Me and the Dungeon Master (the person running the campaign) are the only two in the group with much experience playing, so the next few months should be full of new excitement.
In our party: Lucas the roughriding ranger, who in the States is a military brat and who always offers to walk any of us home, no matter how out of the way it is. Lucie the fighter princess, who was homeschooled until she went to college, and who has written the most compelling character in our campaign (in my opinion). Bridget, who is the only person in France with pink and purple hair and insists her character has the same. Sam D the rogue, who has twice now come to my aid after wine tastings. Sam G who I think is going to be a wizard, with the levellest head of all of us. Me, our bombastic bard. And Sierra, our fearless DM.
All of these people are in my program, and everybody is American. Before you ask, no, we don’t play in French. This is supposed to be our time off. We decided to get this whole thing going after having dinner together and then hitting the town, eventually realizing that we’re all nerds (to a degree) and that we should combined our nerd powers toward a common nerdy goal.
We meet on Monday nights, but that might change because Lucie has youth group. Our first meeting happened to be Lucas’s 22nd birthday, so we had chocolate ice cream cake and played that Taylor Swift song. We gathered in Bridget and Sierra’s apartment (they have the most chairs) and dug in to chips and dip and hot tea.
Mon Dieu, it was so much fun. I felt so relaxed and in my element. Calculating stats and planning character builds was exactly what I needed after a long week of Being In A Foreign Country All Alone. I helped DM Sierra get everyone’s numbers done (DnD is complicated) and learned a lot about everybody. It felt so nice to have moderate expertise in something, like, yes look, I know this and this and that, and I can help you learn it, and I am confident that I know what I’m doing. I don’t always have to be cool and in control, but I didn’t realize how out of control I had felt beforehand, and it was nice to have the reins on my own life for a couple hours.
I don’t blame France for this feeling. Well, not France alone. I guess being an adult is a lot of allowing things to happen without freaking out, and learning how to deal. College in the states is the same, as in I think I play DnD there for the same reasons. But there is something about sitting around with good food and good friends in a bubble of familiarity, surrounded by a country in revolt and a daily life in chaos, that made me really content.
Cordialement,
Allison
P.S.: Okay, so some of it is in French. We do Franglish.
Flan in France 