CLEMENT DOSSIN, UNI High's junior transfer from Tournefeuille, France, loves his music.

This became apparent when we — senior Anna Cangellaris and sophomore Sindha Agha — stepped inside the lobby of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on a recent Friday evening, when a blues band was playing for a crowd of swaying locals.

Senior Anna Cangellaris, junior Clement Dossin, and sophomore Sindha Agha. Gargoyle photo (click to enlarge)

Like most Uni students, we are very curious and amiable, and our curiosity extended to Clement.

We wanted to find out who this mysterious new face at Uni was. A night out seemed like the perfect way to get to know him. Clement agreed to meet us at Krannert for a blues concert and let the evening unwind from there.

We found him slouched in a chair, occasionally tapping his fingers along with the notes of the blues band.

A talented saxophonist himself, Clement is an avid fan of jazz, Miles Davis being one of his favorite artists. A true music enthusiast, he appreciates all genres of music, except for electronica and hip-hop.

When we asked who the band was, Clement replied that he didn’t know. When further pressed for an explanation, he replied that he simply enjoyed “hearing new people in music.”

Shortly after 6 p.m., the three of us exited Krannert and the night out with Clement Dossin began.

The first stop was dinner.

“Where do you want to go?” we asked. Clement declined a response, saying wherever we wanted to go was fine with him.

With much difficulty, we managed to find out what kind of food he hated (sushi — “because I don’t like raw fish”) and then, finally, what kind of food he loved: Mexican. With that, we were off to Fiesta Café.

We were seated in a cozy booth, and after a few minutes of deliberation and a thorough and quite exemplary explanation of what sour cream is, we placed our orders and settled into an evening of conversation.

We had a few pressing questions. Does he like Uni? Was it terribly depressing to move from Tournefeuille, 10 minutes away from downtown Toulouse, to the cornfields of Champaign?

The answer was yes to both questions.

“I like the fact that [Uni] is a small community so everyone is very tight,” he said.

However, he doesn’t like how “everyone speaks about different people.” We wondered if gossip was not as prominent in French high schools, and he answered: “Not as much as it is here.”

How about C-U? What was his reaction on first arriving?

"I found it very, very depressing because there is nothing here except for big cornfields," he said. “[Toulouse] is bigger city and it’s not an agricultural city, but it’s a cultural city … it’s based on cultural things and it’s very different."

However, he pointed out that he likes Champaign a lot more now, and that the kind and welcoming nature of Americans helped him to adjust tremendously.

“My father’s director welcomed us. In fact his wife found us an apartment at the beginning, which we rented,” Clement explained.

His father, Olivier Dossin, is a professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the U of I.

"At the beginning a lot of people came to see us, especially French people," Clement recalled. "I don’t know why … we didn’t necessarily need to see French people. [I find that] when you are in a different country, it is interesting to meet people from that country."

However, his time here will be relatively short. Although Clement’s family is staying in Champaign for three years, he hopes to leave Champaign to attend college elsewhere, probably in the U.S., after he graduates.

Clement Dossin, riding in style. Gargoyle photo by Sindha Agha
(click to enlarge)

After dinner we were faced with the question of what to do next. Clement shook his head and said, “Whatever you would like to do is what I want to do.”

We smiled, wishing that all boys exhibited such European politeness, and realized we had to resort to our American perseverance to obtain an answer.

We eventually found ourselves opening the door to the Red Herring, a vegetarian restaurant on campus, expecting to attend a benefit show that featured several local artists.

The three of us descended the steps into the restaurant and were faced with people significantly older than us seated at several long tables, the aroma of well-seasoned food (unwelcome by our already stuffed stomachs), and a monstrous dog that seemed particularly out of place.

We all looked at each other and burst out laughing, surprised by the unexpected atmosphere of what was clearly not the concert venue we were expecting. We turned around and opened the door to run up the steps and back into the streets of campus.

As we proceeded to walk in a large circle around campus, Clement was content to enjoy the night air and a stroll, telling us that he likes walking.

We came to the intersection of Green and Wright and paused for traffic. Anna jokingly reminded Sindha to cross the street carefully in remembrance of her hit-and-run accident last April.

As Sindha rolled her eyes, Clement told us that he too was hit by a car when he was young. The car ran over his foot, causing him to fall to the ground and fracture his elbow. We responded sympathetically, but when he told us that his mother was the driver of the car, we all three couldn’t help but laugh.

We made a pit stop at Walgreens for a cultural experience. Clement found the aisles of shampoo and soaps uninteresting, so we exited and continued to walk until we had returned to Anna’s car.

Qu’est-ce que nous allons faire? What to do? We were faced with the dismal state of C-U’s nightlife (for high school students).

We came up with another option.

“Do you want to go to a café?” we asked.

Clement threw us a surprised glance and laughed, thinking that we were making a petty attempt to communicate in French via a single word: “café.” We clarified the American use of café, and he made fun of our terrible French accents.

Nevertheless, we were off to our final stop: Café Kopi.

Like always, every table inside of Kopi was filled. We retreated to the blistering cold of Kopi’s outdoor seating. Anna ordered an iced tea, Sindha ordered a vanilla latte, and Clement politely refused any form of American coffee.

“I don’t really like European coffee either, but this one is even worse because it tastes like water,” he explained.

We settled into our uncomfortable wire chairs and delved into an animated conversation about everything from the world’s political injustices to various comparisons of American and French culture. We found out that Clement disagrees with many aspects of American politics — “like the controversies about abortion, like the death penalty,” he said.

“Tournefeuille,” we repeated when he told us where he had lived in France.

He looked at us hopelessly and chuckled.

“Touuurne …” we struggled again.

Then we settled down and started to ask him some straightforward questions.

Future career? “I would like to mix humanities and medicine, but I really don’t know.”

Favorite film? “Pulp Fiction” (and anything by Quentin Tarantino).

Where does he want to go after he leaves Champaign? “Maybe New York.”

How old was he when he start to play saxophone? “Nine.”

Does he play any other instruments? “I try to play the guitar.”

The café conversation was our favorite event of the night. We got to know Clement a little bit better, and discovered that he is quite a thoughtful and witty guy.

Around 10 p.m., as we trudged back to Anna’s car to drive home, we suddenly realized that we had been so wrapped up in conversation that we hadn’t taken a single picture. This led to a comical picture-taking frenzy in the parking lot.

After 30 minutes of terrible pictures and nonstop laughter, we gave up and retreated, yet again, to Anna’s car, ready to finally go home and end our night out with Clement Dossin.

Clement and Sindha near the end of their night out. Gargoyle photo by Anna Cangellaris (click to enlarge)