Ooooh! Sparkles!

It snowed again last night! This morning it did not really continue, but snow glitter hung in the air while I waited for the bus with Andrea. Since the hour "fell back" I have gone to school and come home from school in the dark.
My new bus comes ten minutes later than the one in Vermelles and arrives at school twenty minutes later. This means that for the past two days, if I had had a class first period, I would have been tardy. Other than that, bus rides are completely hectic. I had to sit on someone's lap yesterday on the ride home because there was barely any standing room.
Mme. DeGrotte has been sick recently. Instead of going to Perm as usual, we have a substitute! So far as I can tell, this guy is view pretty much in the universal substitute teacher manner. From my limited experience, however, I have found that subs are treated worse at public school.

Arrrie Potterrrr

Andrea, Nicolas, and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie today in French! I loved it despite the fact that there were no happy moments. Surprisingly, the French dubbing did not even phase me! Ususally, it bothers me a lot if the speech does not correspond with the movement of the mouths, but this time I hardly noticed! Plus, I understood everything!

Happy Random 60th!

Last night we all went to Lille to celebrate a friend's sixtieth birthday.
Now, I have some advice to any travellers to France. The concept of time here is a tad different than in the United States. If someone tells you that they will not stay late at a party, be wary! Most likely, you will not return home until 2h00 the next morning!

Helou Host Family Summary

So my new host family consists of Catherine and Franck Helou, the parents, and their children, Anne, Nicolas, and Andrea. Catherine and Franck are in charge of the local E.Leclerc, a supermarket. Anne is currently studying graphic design at a university in Paris and is here for the weekend withher boyfriend, Adrien. Adrien likes to wear bright, retro colors to bring some happiness to the drab of the grays and blacks in Paris. Nicolas is in my grade but goes to a nearby boarding school and comes home on the weekends. I have stolen his bedroom. Andrea is in 3eme (the equivalent to 9th grade in the US, but it's still considered middle school here). She goes to Sainte Ide, the middle school that corresponds with Saint Paul.
Everyone is super friendly and rather talkative. I have the feeling that I am going to love living here!

A Bittersweet Moment

I changed host families yesterday at 16h30. On the one hand, I was excited at the prospect of discovering a new aspect of the French life from a different angle. On the other hand, I could not stand the idea of leaving what has been my home and family for the past three months.
I'm glad that I like hand-me-downs because I certainly felt like one. One family handed-me-down to the next. I always like to think that people give their favorite clothing items to their favorite friends to share. I hope that is the case here.

My November Fashion Statement

So, yesterday I dressed myself with the snow in mind. I wore tights, long underwear, and fuzzy socks under my jeans. I wore long underwear underneath my turtleneck and poofy coat on top. Finally, I accessorized with my cloche hat, purple scarf, and big, clunky snow boots that made each foot weigh about ten pounds.
Just to acknowledge my ridiculousness, Mother Nature melted almost all of the snow by noon. At least I was warm!

The View From My Window!

Oh my goodness! Yay! It has been snowing for thirty minutes and we already have at least an inch!!!!!
Unfortunately, I'm certain that I will still have school tomorrow. Unlike in Charlotte where everything shuts down and the town rushes to WalMart to buy bread and milk, life still goes on here. On the bright side, I cannot wait for all the snowball fights to ensue tomorrow! Yay Yay Yay Yay Yay!!! I love SNOW! :D

Sainte Catherine

Today is the day of Sainte Catherine in France. This means that any woman who is over the age of twenty five and unmarried must wear some kooky hat in shame. I told you that France is an anti-feminist country!
I saw my bus stop buddy for possibly the last time (for the next three months, at least) today at the usual time. She told me that her niece passed seventh out of fifty two in her class to become a lawyer! Congratulations for her! She also told me that she had told her family members about me, and that I am one of her few friends that she has made in her old age! I will miss her dearly!
So, today was my first day back at school this week. The doctor that I went to see on Monday had given me an absent note for three days! Needless to say, English and stepping in Sport class were pretty fun!

Thanksgiving in France

Once upon a time, there was a very fat French king. All of the peasants in the surrounding towns, however, were skinny. This king, feeling bad about his fatness, decided to host a grand feast, inviting all of the townspeople. The purpose of this feast, obviously, was to fatten those surrounding him so he wouldn't feel so bad about himself. Of course, he could not give this as a reason to his loyal subjects. So, he told them that he wanted to celebrate and give thanks to them for all the work that they did in his kingdom. His people rejoiced! From then on, the country feasted every third Thursday in the month of November!
So, I think France deserves its own Thanksgiving because it is the best holiday known to man. Since the American feast story between the Indians and pilgrams is mostly fabricated and embellished, I have now fabricated my own Thanksgiving story for France. I will now send this lovely tale to President Sarkozy, and he will declare it a national holiday, and the French will live happily ever after, content, and with full stomaches!
Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Packing Take 1

So, since I was sick on Sunday, I obviously did not change host families, as pre-planned. Now, I am due to swap houses this Saturday at 16h00. My goal is to actually have packed by then.
I remember a quote that once stated that goals are just dreams with deadlines. I must say that I don't actually believe this to be true. Otherwise, it seems a little silly that I dream of packing.

Chez le Docteur

So, I just got back from going to a French doctor. Yesterday makes the fourth time since the three months that I have been here that I have been sick! I am NEVER sick back in the U.S.! I am beginning to feel that my love for this lovely country of France is unrequited!
It was interesting, though, because the doctor's office had a just a waiting room and an examination room. In fact, the entire secretarial area (desks, computers, fax machine, pictures of loved ones..) was located right next to the sanitary cot covered with that really louds, crinkly, uncomfortable paper. It did not at all have the feeling of regular doctor's office. To top that off, Doctor Hoyez wore a striped gray sweater and khakis. Not a single blue-green cotton scrub sleeve in sight!
Anyways, he ended up prescribing me four different medications: Spasfon, Doliprane, Domperidone, and Smecta. Although, I think I will feel like an eighty year old with allergies, a failing kidney, arthritis, and high blood pressure if I take all of them, especially since I'm supposed to take two of each at a time. Besides, I feel a little better now, and this will probably have passed by tomorrow morning. I'll just go into old-lady phase the next time I start to feel the teensiest bit queasy.

Lost

This morning I woke up at nine, happy with my solid five hours of sleep. Once everyone else decided to join me in my state of awakeness, we headed up to Vimy Ridge. Vimy Ridge is the location of the Canadian Monument, one of the first places I visited upon my arrival to France!
We had loads of fun exploring the tunnels underneath the site and walking through the trenches. When we started to head over to the actual monument, I steered myself towards the restrooms close by. It was so warm inside in comparison to the freezing icicles that were beginning to form on my fingertips outside, that I warmed my hands under the hand dryer for about three minutes. It seems that all my unhappy happenings revolve around toilets and restrooms. (Notice the blatant avoidance of the words bathroom and toiletroom.)
Anyways, when I finally exited the building, everyone had vanished. I hurried frantically up to the monument. The Canadian guide told me that she had no clue where they had gone. She drove me to the edge of the monument in her golf cart, and from there I ran. I had a vague idea of the path we had walked earlier, and hoped to catch up to them in time without falling in the mud. The further I kept running, the more desperate I became to see someone. To relax, I told myself that I still had two hours before parents started arriving. This meant I still had two hours before anyone noticed I was gone and two hours before I got into trouble.
I finally caught up with the group after about fifteen minutes. As I had guessed, no one had even suspected that I had been missing. This is why we have chaperones who are supposed to do head-counts.

It All Started With an Apple

So, Michael came over yesterday after school to help cook. Last night was the Rotary "exotic meal" at Lycee Saint Paul where we all made dishes from our home countries. Michael and I made a giant pot of chili, four cornbreads, and two large dishes of apple crisp! All of the French people kept asking us why we had not made hamburgers. Hello! It's called breaking the stereotype!
We finally arrived at the school at 4h15, an hour and fifteen minutes late. After the initial hugging procession, Michael and I led the way through Lens to the center of town. Once we arrived, however, we had no clue what to do. Randomly, I saw a tent out of the corner of my eye and headed over to it. There I learned that it was National Children's Rights Day. All that means is that the entire street had tents set up with free games and snacks for local children. Since we Rotary exchange students have language skills that compare to those of children's, we felt free to partake in all of the merriment! I never want to grow old.
We returned back to school an hour earlier than we were supposed to due to the cold weather. On the bright side, the sky was bluer than it had been for weeks! Since we were early, the Rotarians were still interviewing the potential candidates for next year's exchange. I asked to help, so Martina (Argentina) and I spent a quarter of an hour convincing some guy that Argentina is a much better country that the U.S. (There are too many students who want to go to America.)
The Rotarians then told us that we were not allowed to eat what we had slaved over all day because there were too many guests. They fed us croque monsieurs (grilled ham and cheese sandwiches) instead. If you had cooked for three hours, you would not have listened to them either! It was all delicious!

We finally left around midnight when we all went to Hugues's house and stayed up until 4h00AM playing Rotary exchange student games.

Doubt

So, yesterday I learned something that contradicts the entire foundation of my American education! There are only five continents!
This means that I can no longer sing the continents' song to the tune of Frere Jacques! "North America, South America, Europe-Asia-Africa, Europe-Asia-Africa! Don't forget Australia; don't forget Antarctica! These are the continents! These are the continents!"
WRONG!
The continents include the following: AMERICA (no North or South, just America), AFRICA, OCEANIA (the fancy name for Australia), ANTARCTICA, and EURASIA!!!!!
A continent is apparently a landmass surrounded entirely by water.
My mind is blown! I no longer know what to believe! Does two plus two really equal four? I'm beginning to doubt other aspects of my childhood education. Can I not trust the education given to me? What am I to believe?

Just Call Me The Pink Strawberry Marshmellow

Today, some teacher that I have never talked to before came up to me and patted my head. Because I was wearing my pink cloche hat, he told me that I looked like a pink strawberry marshmellow (similar to a peep). He patted my head twice. It was odd.
I feel like I stick out here like an adorably pink sore thumb. This is how I rebel against the masses of gray, black, white, and tan that the French wear. Combined with the eternally gray skies, I feel personally obliged to add a little cheer and pep to the atmosphere with pinks and purples and pastels!

The Day I "Dried" Italian

This afternoon I skipped Italian. To skip a class in French is translated "secher". Literally, it means "to dry."I don't quite see the correlation between the two definitions, but that's French for you!
I guess it can't really be called skipping, though, because the teacher made me go and get an absence note from the vice-principal. I still got the work sheet from which she tought today. Other that that, I'm a bad girl!
The reason why I skipped is because Marie, Paul, and Yamina, my group from TPE (Travaux Personels Encadres), and I had a meeting at 14h00 with a real estate agent. We are planning on pulling all of our money together to buy a loft in Lens where we will hold parties that blare American music until three in the morning every night!
Actually, our project for TPE focuses on green (as in ecological) houses, more specifically, HQE (Haute Qualite Environmental) and BBC (Batiment Basse Consommation) Effinergie houses.
We talked with the realtor for a good hour, asking him basic questions and inquiring further into what we have researched on the internet. Happily, I understood everything he said, and I even asked a question that was not pre-prepared!

Brouillard

I awoke this morning to white! No, it did not snow. Rather, a curtain of thick fog hung in the air and stayed there all day. So, when riding the bus home in the afternoon, I still could not see but fifteen feet in front of my nose.

The Chicken Who Couldn't Cross The Road

The Pecqueurs have three chickens and a rooster. They just recently replaced their chickens with younger ones because theirs were no longer laying eggs. I remember learning that chickens cannot fly. Apparently, they can jump higher with the help of long wings. Christophe had been meaning to cut the wings. This afternoon when he went to collect eggs, one of them jumped the fence and Apache, the dog, immediately sprang on top of it and bit off its head. Guess what we're having for dinner? Just kidding! It takes too much time to prepare it for tonight, and we have to wait two days anyways before eating it for some health reason, I think, so we will have it for dinner on Wednesday!

Un Grand Echec

Today, for Heloise's birthday I tried to use Grammy's fudge icing recipe and a cake recipe that I found online to make a cake. Heloise and I had a blast making the cake! The room looked like a hurricane had blown through it only ten minutes into the mixing.
The cake tasted like chewy pudding. Yuck! The icing was not much better. I had purchased super-fine powdered sugar at the store, but to the French, powdered sugar is the same thing as granulated sugar, so the icing was grainy.

I must say that it would probably have gone a lot more smoothly if the measurements were convertible. Yes, even using a converter on the internet, it's hard to measure out 113.4 grams of butter. I think that from now on, I will have to stick to recipes that I know by heart, and that I can do with rough estimates and without measuring cups!

Un Repas Chez Saed

Thursday night we all went over to Sabine's collegue, Lizette's house to eat a meal made my her Yugoslavian (Bosnian) husband, Saed. He made us a great four-course meal. According to him, he did not use any recipes and remembers everything from watching his mother and grandmother cook when he was younger. I know this because when I asked him for the recipes, he couldn't tell me. It was all Magnifique! I must say that his homemade backlava outshined any store-bought or restaruant-bought that I had ever eaten before. Other than that, I can't really compare what he made with anything else, because it was all new to me.
Among the party-goers were Saed's son, Lizette's son, his wife, and their two adorably blonde sons who are five and almost three.
The only down side to the evening was that three of the men surrounding me smoked. Even now, two days and three shampoo treatments later, my hair still smells of cigarettes. Heloise says that for every two cigarettes that someone smokes, you smoke one just by being near him. If that is really the case, I smoked at least a pack. Man, I should probably cut back...I'm frightened to see how my lungs will look by the end of this year.

Gay or European

France might be the only country where a guy can get away with wearing a v-neck shirt, a scarf, jewelry, skinny jeans, hair gel, and a "man purse" and still be completely straight!

Consequently, I have the most difficult time discerning a gay guy from a straight one here. In fact, when my friends told me about one of their friends being gay, I honestly could not tell the difference between him and the rest of the guys at my school. I'm not sure if I should be embarassed by this fact, or if the guys should...

Anyways, I've had this song stuck in my head for the past two days! It is totally perfect!

Le Cadre Noir

Tonight, Sabine, Christophe, Heloise, thirty-six other members of the Meurchin Equestrian Center, and I went to see the Cadre Noir of Saumur! The spectacle usually takes place in Paris, but for some reason, it was held in Lievin this year! All I can say is that it was fantastic!!

Pick a Number, Any Number...53

Italian class was awesome today! First, we got back some work that we had handed in the previous class. I had spent an excess amount of time researching mine and figuring out how to translate it into Italian, but all of that resulted in only two medium-sized paragraphs that did not even fill a full page. Pauline, sitting behind me, had two typed pages, complete with pictures and the works. (She actually told me that she had copied and pasted it, though.) I feared that my paper would receive a "sale note" (bad grade) in comparison to the masterpiece Pauline created, but when the teacher handed mine back to me, she gave me a nineteen out of twenty! Yay!
In addition to that, half of the class was absent, so we played with a paper fortune teller the last hour of class! It was by far the best Italian class ever! By the way, the fact that my favorite color is pink means that I'm reserved. I will never doubt a psychic again! Haha

Le Gouverneur

Last night, the Governor for Rotary District 1520 came to the Lens-Lievin club. I love it when esteemed guests come and visit because it gives us a great excuse to eat! Unfortunately, I did not talk much with the governor, but from the few words that passed between us, I gleaned that he is very nice.
At one point in the evening, we participated in a game where a song played, and we had to guess it's movie of origin and the person in the room with whom it corresponded. Hugues's movie was "Les Dents de la Mer" (Jaws) because he's a dentist, and mine was "L'Etudiante," since I am obviously the student of the group.

My suspicions about the lack of feminism in France were confirmed last night. There are only three female Rotary members in the Lens-Lievin club, and they have all recently joined because only five years ago, this club was exclusively for men. Also, there are more female Rotarians in Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco) than in France! Now, that is saying something!

Mortification

I don't blame anyone with the desire to sever all ties from me after my mishap yesterday. First of all, I multiplied two and three and got five. That's normal for me; it's a careless error. However, in History, when my teacher asked me to confirm the date of America's Independence Day, I said that it was in 1777. She gave me a funny look, and asked me if I were sure it wasn't in 1776. I knew immediately that she was right, and I don't know why I said it. In my own defense, French might be the only language (cursedly) in which one has to perform mathematics while counting. For example: seventy is sixty plus ten, and eighty is four times twenty.

At least, to even things out, I got an eighteen out of twenty on a memorized dialogue that I presented in Spanish with Sophie.

Happy Birthday, Heloise!

Today is my host sister's, Heloise's birthday! I made everyone chili for dinner because Sabine came home later than usual. I had difficulty finding chili powder. I subsituted a pre-packaged Mexican chili mix for it, and it tasted almost the same as the normal recipe I use to make it in the US. Sabine also brought home a cake for Heloise, and we all sang in French and English as she blew out her candle five times. (She really liked lighting it!)

Au Contraire!

Today, I spoke a lot with a guy named Baptiste, the one who dances like Michael Jackson! He takes my bus to school. As soon as I stepped off, he came up to me and started quizzing me about my life in America. He was particularly curious why I came to France of all countries because, after all, English is the most popular language. I explained to him that I already knew how to speak English, so it would be pointless for me to do an exchange in my own country! He kept arguing that the French aren't nice people, the language is ugly, the country has nothing to offer, and that New York City's drivers are much nicer than those in France. All I could think to say to that was, "PSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!!!! YEAH, RIGHT!" In my limited experience, I believe the opposite of everything he said!
It was interesting, though, and I was proud of him because he spoke to me all day in English. I responded in French, of course. I know how difficult it is to speak non-stop in a foreign language, and it was really nice to see him make such a great effort!

Lens vs. Montpelier

Tonight, Christophe took me to my first professional football (soccer) game! It took place conveniently in Lens at the Stade Bollaert (Bollaert Stadium). The name of the soccer team is Le Racing Club de Lens, and their colors are (sang et or) blood and gold (red and yellow). Before we left the house, Christophe gave me an RCL beret, so I looked awesome! When we got to the stadium, I saw groups of people wearing huge red and yellow striped scarves. I think I'm going to have to buy one, so I can tell people who don't know about Lens that I go to Hogwarts and am in Gryffindor!

Lens scored the first goal within the first seven minutes! The second one they scored thirty minutes later. Montpelier didn't score any! Yay, Lens!

I would have to say that American football and soccer are basically the same, except for the fact that the games are totally different. Everyone dressed up to show support, all the men shouted and screamed when something went wrong, everyone chanted and stomped, and there was even a shirtless fat man standing on a podium, egging on the crowd! Yep, exactly the same.

Frenglish

Today, I was looking at one of my new pens when I noticed that it read, "Made in France." At first I thought, "Oh, how cool! This pen was actually made in France and not in China!" Then, I looked at it again and noticed that it was written in English...

Finances...

Mme. Braun, my Economy teacher asked me to write a report today for next week on the financial situation in the US. Wonderful. I'm in France. Shouldn't I write a report on the French financial situation instead?

La Rentree...au PingPong

Yesterday was the first day back at school from my two amazing weeks of Halloween vacation! Since it was a Thursday, I did not have to go to school until one. Everyone else in my class, on the other hand, had testing on Science and Math for four hours first thing in the morning!
So when I got to school, I learned that my English class had been cancelled, so I had an hour of Study-Hall (I've decided that that's easier for you to understand than Perm.) followed by two hours of ping-pong.
In EPS (P.E.) we had an evaluation. I was dissapointingly surprised that I was in nineteenth place out of twenty five and that I had averaged at the table seven out of eleven. (I didn't understand this because I had only been to table seven once, and I had never gone down to the eighth table.) Anyways, I played and did fine; I came in second. Afterwords, I decided to go ahead and ask the coach how it was possible that I had averaged at table seven. As it turns out, I had been correct and my average was actually table five, which would have given me a much lower number than ninteen! I asked at the end of class, so it didn't change anything really, but I'm still fairly pleased with myself.

Hey there, Delilah

Here is a short list of aspects of American life that I currently crave:

• Listening to Delilah's radio show.
• Eating gingerbread cookie dough.
• Raking giant leaf piles and jumping into them. I finally noticed that the trees here have changed colors and look magnificent! Now, I just want to bury myself in a mountain of them!
• Drinking hot apple cider. (Here, cider has alcohol and carbonation and tastes nasty!)

Belgique!

I went to Lille today for the third time during this vacation break! I am so proud of myself, too, because since Michael was in Brittany and didn't go, I took the train all by myself and did not get lost once! I have the strange urge to sing, "I'm a big kid, now!" I met up with James (Australia), Darpan (India), Leah (Oregon), Martina (Argentina), and Carlos (Mexico) at the Lille train station when I arrived. From there, James, who has been here since last January, told us that he knew a great little cafe where we could all go and grab a bite to eat, so we took the metro.

We took the metro to the very last stop, thirty minutes away! I think that James was a tad discombobulated when we arrived because we walked around in circles for ten minutes before we headed in a specific direction.
When we finally arrived at our destination, we were right next to Belgium! Yes, the country! At the same time, we were still in Lille. Since we are not allowed to leave the district, we just took a lot of photos of the sign that indicated our entrance into Belgium.

Unfortunately, it was already past two by this time, and all of the cafes were closed, so we settled with shopping and picking up some groceries at Carrefour. The metro was almost empty on our ride back, which means that we got prime seating!

We spent the rest of the afternoon going crazy, taking pictures, and reading the 2011 Guiness Book of World Records in a larger Carrefour in the shopping center EuraLille.

Bowling et Karting

Two weeks ago before the Halloween vacations began, a few friends (Marie, Yamina, and Laurence) and I planned a day-trip to the bowling alley. Today, we went. The bowling alley did not open until 14h00, so we had a little bit of a wait. When the doors finally opened, Marie, as she had warned us before-hand, charged ahead of the stampede of people crowded at the door's entrance; therefore, she was first in the line and we were able to play our game of bowling before everyone else! We had so much fun! I won, but I just barely broke one hundred. After that we decided to go go-karting (it's just called "le karting" in French). Unfortunately, we had to wait almost an hour for the arena to open. During this time, we took a kaboodle of photos (although Yamina would prefer that none of pictures of her go online).

We purchased two rounds of karting. Sadly, I wasn't able to use my camera because we looked hysterical! Since go-karting is relatively dangerous, we had top wear helmets, but underneath our helmats, we wore cafeteria lady-type hair nets for sanitation purposes! Ironically, there were no seat belts. The first go-around, I came in third place, after two other people who I didn't know who raced against us. The second time I knew how to better handle the go-kart. This time we raced against a group of about five boys. I can proudly say that I passed all of them and came in first place! Say hello to the new Danica Patrick! (I can't believe that I even know who she is!) When we stepped off of the race course, the man who worked there congratulated me for whizzing past all of the boys! I then had a group of guys who looked to be thirteen or fourteen start talking to me. I think they were saying pretty much the same thing that the first man had said, but I couldn't understand because they were all talking at once, so I looked at Marie and asked her what they were saying. She then told them that I am American, so they responded with the typical, "Oh, t'es belle! Je t'aime, l'Americaine!" I was honestly more interested in what they were saing before. Part of me hates being stereotyped as an American, but the other part of me just wishes that the French could be more creative reaction-wise when they discover that I am American.

Honestly, I love being the American in France! It's the best excuse for anything since "my dog ate my homework!"

Ma Premiere Presentation au Rotary

This evening I had to give my first Rotary presentation (in French, of course). Hugues told me that I had to speak for at least twenty minutes. I have no idea how long I spoke, but in the end I think I arrived somewhere in the twenty-minute ballpark. To distract from my less-than-perfect speaking skills and to use up some more of my twenty minutes, I had a powerpoint presentation for my visual aid. I'm not sure really whether or not I was supposed to speak more about my life before in the US or the past two months that I have spent here. (Wow! Can you believe that I have already been here for two months?) I ended up using the first two slides to summarize the previous sixteen years of my existance and the other twenty-two to share all that I have done here (and England this past weekend).
Once I finished my presentation, Thomas summarized his year in Michigan and added in some cute little anecdotes. He concluded the meeting.
Two candidates for the student exchange for next year came tonight, and I listened to their interviews, given by a small panel of Rotariens, Thomas, and yours truly (even though I just listened and did not ask any questions). The first girl's first choice was to go to Canada, followed by Italy, followed by the Phillippines or Argentina. The second girl wished to go to Japan, followed by the United States, followed by South Korea or Taiwan. One of the girls was selected tonight to study abroad, sponsored by my Lens-Lievin Rotary club and that was the first girl. The other girl will still have a chance to go abroad, but she will be mixed in the pot with the other (at least five) students who have completed an application.

A Rotary Joke

There once was a man who loved learning and sharing random facts about animals. He was always spewing the most unimportant information such as:
"Did you know that the ostrich's brain is as big as its eye?"
"Did you know that the elephant cannot jump?"
One night, while his wife was working in the kitchen, he came up to her and said, "Did you know that lions can have intercourse up to twenty times in one day?"
Without turning around, she responded, "Well it's a good thing that you joined Rotary in that case."