CIREFE Caféteria

I spend too much time in the CIREFE caféteria.

First of all, the French "caféteria" does not hold the same connotation as the English "cafeteria". Instead of being a location where you buy unappetizing lunch and eat at long tables with your friends, a caféteria is a space where you can sit and drink café. In other words, the CIREFE caféteria serves as a break room for students and teachers.

The CIREFE caféteria is actually a small crowded room with a few wooden benches and fewer stainless steal tables to set your tasse de café upon. There are newspapers ranging from the local Rennes paper to the national Le Monde available to read. The best part of the CIREFE caféteria are the automatic coffee and snack machines. You can get a candy bar or a soda for about 80 cents (except Coke for some reason is a euro). Or better yet, you can get a very small cup of coffee - regular, crème, cappuccino, macchiato, chocolat - for 40 cents. Unfortunately, the coffee only lasts for a few sips...but the price is right.

The CIREFE caféteria is also a place where French is rarely spoken. English-speakers, Chinese-speakers, and Spanish-speakers congregate together to take a break from their French. Americans are the worst. It's rather disappointing, but you cannot escape it when all your friends are laughing and talking as you sit on those wooden benches. The conversations they have are also of the most ridiculous sort. One afternoon, people were heating up over whether masculine and feminine words existed in English. Someone even tried to prove that the pronunciation of "the" entailed the gender of the word. (Of course that was stupid, for the pronunciation of "the" is dictated by the presence of a vowel or consonant following it.) Because these conversations are so loud and fierce, it's impossible to read or study to the point where you give up and let yourself become part of the discussion.

When Americans in the CIREFE caféteria are not participating in absurd debates, they like to sing and dance. Beyoncé's "All the Single Ladies" for example is popular. There are several people who have been working on learning the dance and will occasionally practice their moves in the small space, attracting attention from those passing by in the hallway and even those in the classrooms. There has also been a rousing chorus of the "Star-Spangled Banner" where even our friend from Saudi Arabia, who is probably more American than most of us, joined in.

All in all, the CIREFE caféteria is an unusual and unreal place. I don't know why I spend so much time there, but I know when I look back at my days in Rennes, the caféteria will always be a part of that memory.

Liz, being herself, in the caféteria.