Pedram’s bestest friend visited us from Geneva, where he works at the CERN as a nuclear engineer.  Do not make the mistake I did and ask him what he does — it includes such incredibly abstract ideas that it makes me dizzy to think about it.  Basically, it is like they are looking to collide neutrons (protons? electrons?  chupatrons?), which will create a huge black hole and kill us all.  They do this out of curiosity, because they are bored and have too much time and money on their hands.  (Just joking, he has reassured me that there is no reason to worry about the black hole).

Christophe is Belgian, and the means that him and Pedram talk in their own dialect, which includes:

ey, kwe?

ey, kwe!

which means, “hello, how are you doing?” and “I am doing great, thanks”.  When together, they also add a “quoi” at the end of every sentence, which I compare to my saying “like” all the time.

Christophe is a generally, all around, super cool laid back guy, and it is hard for me to make fun of him when he is just so nice. He is such a good guy that he never complained about us forcing him to enjoy the Quebecois cuisine of choice, poutine.  I’ll go more into poutine in detail sometime later, but it is a strange quebecois dish that is both hearty and tasteless.  Since Christophe is from Belgium where they eat horse, rabbits and raw beef, we figured he’d be fine with poutine.

And he was.  He never once complained, never once asked what was the funny cheese, what a strange combination of ingredients (his poutine mediterranean included eggs and sausage), never once made a face.  He finished the entire dish, using a knife and fork for his fries, leaving not a trace of gravy on his plate.

He left this morning, but not without gifting us some of our favorite gifts from the old continent — chocolate baby!  Swiss chocolate, but still oh so good.