Adventures in France, part "deux"

Sep 04, 2005 14:50


Well several more days have passed!  The time is really flying.  I've heard news of the disaster hurricane in the US...sounds horrible, to say the least.  Things here are quite a bit calmer.  My days consist of sightseeing or shopping...and of course eating.  The French are very big on eating, and are nowhere near as diet conscious as the Americans.  I'll give you an example.  As everyone in America knows, Special K is a "diet" cereal.  Well, it's considered a "diet" cereal in France too (I've seen the commercials)...but it has bits of chocolate in it.  How dietetic.  I asked my host family how a cereal with chocolate in it could possibly be considered a dietetic "lose weight" kind of cereal, and they responded "because it's dark chocolate, it's healthy", launching into a long explanation about the health benefits of dark chocolate.  Well that may be true, but only in France could chocolate actually be considered a diet food.

Being a foreign person in France is really quite amusing.  I get quite a range of responses to the phrase "je suis americaine", ranging from polite indifference to geninue interest to true excitement.  One guy in particular responded "WONDERFUL!!!" and proceeded to try to speak English for the rest of the night.   Another lady I met did the same thing, with humorous results.  I'm finding that a lot of the mean American stereotypes about the French aren't true at all.  They take frequent showers and nobody has been rude to me yet (however, I hear that it's true that Parisians are rude).  Not all of the stereotypes are false, though.  A lot of people smoke, they cheek-kiss constantly, and they really do care a lot about food.  They also say "ah bon", "oh-la-la", "zut", and countless other typically French phrases that you hear "French" people say on TV all the time.

As much as I love all the touring, some of the most amusing and memorable moments occur right here chez nous.  The other day, I was out on the patio reading a book when the phone rang.  Through the window, I could hear Veronique pick it up, speaking French with whoever is on the other end of the phone.  I wasn't really listening until I heard her say (in heavily accented, broken English) "your...dautair...eez...adorable" and then (in French) "OK, I'll give the phone to Megan".  Alarmed at the linguistic catastrophe I am hearing, I hurry into the house, and she hands the phone to me, laughing.  Turns out that mom, trying to be polite and culturally sensitive, had learned a few phrases in French so she could ask for me on the telephone.  Apparantly her accent was a little too good, because Veronique then assumed that she could speak French, and proceeded to babble away in French while my mom stoically repeated her two memorized phrases, hoping eventually the phone would be given to me.  This story was gleefuly recounted at dinner by one of Veronique's daughters (who studies English and would have done just fine, had she answered), doing spirited, exaggerated impressions of Veronique's heavily accented English.  I explained that Mom doesn't speak French, and next time it might be better to just hand me the phone instead of trying to engage in French conversation.  I shouldn't have worried.  Mom hasn't called unexpectedly since the incident.
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