A not-so-traditional Easter weekend

Saturday my friends and I went to a soccer game in Dijon. DFCO is the city’s team and its fans have been quite excited as this is the first year the team is playing in France's top national league.  Before leaving the States I read about DFCO moving up into the top league so I was very excited to finally see a live game!  DFCO played Nancy and in the afternoon Nancy fans who came to Dijon for the game started taking over Place de la Lib chanting, yelling, and generally being obnoxious and making their presence known!  Apparently this is a common thing for European soccer games and to be honest it took me back to away team fans at a Pats or Sox game!  However, away team fans have a separate entrance and section to sit in to lower the number of fights and violence...not a bad idea, huh?  Although Dijon ended up losing 2-0 it was still really fun to watch and the atmosphere was great!

Local paper advertising the game!

On Sunday, Amanda Jim and I decided to have an “Easter lunch”- aka a delicious meal at a café with an excuse to have wine and dessert with it. (Not that you ever really need an excuse to have wine with a meal here.) I will never tire of how relaxed going out to eat is here and how nice it is to finish a meal but still be able to carry on in conversation for as long as you’d like!  After lunch Jim and I met up with Alice to go to a beatbox festival!  It was amazing especially since I had never seen anything like it before!  

My words cannot do it justice so here is a clip of the first performer, Alexis Sorba :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxxsYCuciQk

After Alexis Sorba's performance, a group called Miss White and the Drunken Piano performed.  This is an official clip of theirs but not my favorite song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3omxgavXy4

The group played a longer set and it was very interactive- they even came out into the crowd to give a beginner lesson on beatboxing- so cool!  Random beatbox festivals like this are a perfect reminder of how life in a city, even a small one, can be so fantastic!

Poster for the festival

Today is Easter Monday so schools were closed and everyone had the day off from work.  A bunch of us decided to finally go see Titanic in 3D- in French! Watching the film in French was amusing: hearing how certain lines are translated, noticing when Jack and Rose switch from "vous" to "tu" (read about tu vs. vous here), and learning new vocabulary (an oar is "une rame") made seeing Titanic this time around feel almost as if it were the first time- almost.  I do have to say though- the intensity just does not seem to fully translate when a movie is dubbed.  For example Rose promising “Je n'abandonnerai jamais!” at the end just wasn’t the same as hearing “I’ll never let go!”

Here’s the French trailer so you can get a little taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZV3PIabsE

Overall it was great to see it back in the theatre as watching it on the big screen truly is the best venue for such an epic film!

"Retro" French poster from the first release

So it was a weekend full of good friends, good food, soccer, beatboxing, and Titanic- not traditional by any means but one of my favorite Easter weekends to date!

Word of the Post: Joyeuses Pâques! -- Happy Easter!