What's that, I can speak French? But only to strangers who show up at my door?

Today I had potentially one of the oddest experiences of my life here in France thus far. Whilst toying with the idea of going running, I was drinking coffee and reading the paper this morning when someone knocked on the door. I decided to ignore them for fear of having to speak French. Then they rang the doorbell. Twice. Unshowered and dressed rather disgustingly, I answered the door. There dressed looking perfect and French was a woman looking very official and holding a clipboard. Our conversation went as follows, only in France, and some of her lines she may actually not have said and I may have just thought she was saying. But, it felt like a huge turning point in my life that I could even communicate with her.

Woman: Bonjour, is this the home of Roomie's last name?

Me: Oui

Woman: I am from the neighborhood's office of government (this statement is debatable, I'm hoping that's what she said. Otherwise I gave way too much info to a stranger). Are you Roomie?
Me: No

Woman: Are you Roomie's sister? (whose room I am subletting)

Me: No

Woman: Who are you?

Me: I am the roommate of Roomie...her sister is in Denmark (Denmark said with a French accent, meaning a pathetic attempt to throw a rolled R in)

Woman: How long have you lived here for?

Me: I have lived here for 2 months (I just learned the past tense and now don't have to speak only in the present and near future!)

Woman: How long will you live here for?

Me: I have will to live here for 2 months in May (sometimes I confuse my tenses and seem to give all of them)

Woman: How much do you pay?

Me (starting to feel a little sketched out and illegal): Um...I don't know? (i lied)

Woman: Why do you not know?

Me: Um....my dad pays my rent?

Woman: To the landlord?

Me (hoping to god she's not the landlord): Yes, he pays to the landlord the rent.

Woman: How many people live here?

Me (having a flashback to eight of us living illegally in a house in Ann Arbor and having the city come to inspect): Two?

Woman: How many rooms do you have?

Me (having just reviewed rooms in the house and feeling excited about my knowledge): We have two bedrooms, we have a salon, we have a room of bathing, and we have a small kitchen!

Woman: How long have you studied French for?

Me: Two months

Woman: You speak very well

Me (I have learned the proper response to this statement is): Oh no, I want to learn more and my accent is not good.

Woman (nodding about my terrible accent): You will learn. Can I see your apartment?

Me (feeling a little too comfortable with her after her praise of my French): Of course, come on in!

So I gave her a grand tour of the place. She asked me if I knew Roomie's phone number, and then as I checked in on my phone she read her number off of her official looking clipboard. She asked for my name and told me she would call Roomie.

As of this evening Roomie has not heard from her. It was all very bizarre but I just felt so high off of my ability to communicate that I didn't see the strangeness in it at the time.

In other news, my very,very, very pro-war, anti-abortion, fiancee in Iraq friend and I are planning a jovial showdown of who is more patriotic after she claimed she loved America more than me today. Check back soon for exciting updates on this trivia challenge we will have.

Emus, Running, and French Genes

Last night, for no apparent reason other than perhaps the swiss roll cakes were getting to me, I decided to go for a run. This happens about four times a year where the idea of seeing how far I can run with out passing out sounds like fun. Usually I make it about ten minutes before I pack away the tennis shoes for a few months. Yesterday I lasted twenty minutes, dodging Parisians who looked at me funny for daring to exercise on their streets, before I stopped at the sight of emus.

That's right, let it soak in. Emus. Maybe ostriches. All I know is they looked suspiciously like the giant bird I saw once at an emu farm in South Carolina. There were three of them in a small cage, like the kind they keep owls in at the Potter Park Zoo. At first I thought they were fake, based on the building behind them that said Natural History Museum, and the fact that they were not moving. But, grateful for any reason that allowed me to stop running, I decided to have a stare down with them and find out if they were real. They were! They moved their heads and one even stood up. Apparently there is a zoo in Paris, and nobody bothered to tell me. Sure, I love wandering the city and looking at giant phallic symbol after giant phallic symbol and marveling at the architectural genius of it all as much as the next person, but what I really love is zoos. So you can imagine my happiness at finding this exciting development. I plan to pay the zoo a proper visit later this week when I am not sweaty and disgusting.

Anyway, after the emu excitement I had a burst of energy and ran to meet my friend at her house, lured by the promise of water. After spending an hour watching her facebook, I decided my fun had ended and moved my journey on home. However, I managed to get lost and, mapless, spent the next two hours wandering the streets of Paris. I finally made it home, four hours after I had left my house.

I arrived home and just a few minutes later Roomie, who recently has been making the rarest of appearances in the apartment, bustled through the door carrying a giant bag from McDonalds. She came into the kitchen, where I was downing a bottle of water, red faced and sweating, and she looked me up and down and said: "You go jogging? I go to McDonalds. So, great." (So, great, being her favorite way to end a sentence in which she is trying to suggest that she should be healthier, i.e. "I drink so much, my friends call me AA. So, great." I appreciate the attempt at cross language sarcasm). Bless her heart, she meant well, but as she sat in the salon eating her third (I kid you not, third) quarter pounder it took all my will power not to break her tiny little French self in half and extract the DNA that allows her to eat three quarter pounders a day and still look like she stepped off a page of Vogue.

Sunshine, Diet Coke, and Swiss Roll Cakes

Okay. It may not be summer time. But...it stopped raining! And it got warm out! And I got a lot, a lot happier about life. So I decided to boycott any prospect of winter that may be trying to weasel its way back into Paris and am no longer wearing jackets and will be wearing sunglasses everyday. Fair, I may look like an idiot. And fair, this strategy, which I have tried before, has never really worked. But I have faith.

In other news. Yesterday I was reunited with the love of my life. Diet Coke. Thanks to the magical work of Justine Simisky and the US Postal Service, I am currently the owner of three full cans of diet coke. And one empty one. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life thus far in Paris. After a distressing day of phonetics where I learned I could not say the most basic word in the French language correctly (that would be Bonjour), I marched my sad little self to the post office to get a package I had missed even though according to the time they wrote I was totally at home when they tried to deliver it. Halfway to the post office it started pouring rain. I had no umbrella and ran. Life was sad. I got to the post office and stood in a long line with a creepy French man behind me who kept saying what I can only assume were inappropriate comments. But because I did not understand them, I was not as bothered. Then, oh but then. The lights of heaven shone down upon me. The woman at the post office loved that I tried to speak her language, and handed me a box. Justine had written the contents of the box on the outside (ya know, to make it clear she wasn't sending bombs or anthrax or anything) and one of these items said soda. Being familiar with east coast talk, I knew this soda word was code for pop and suddenly felt my one duty in life was to protect this box until I could get it to the safety of my apartment. I wrapped my arms around the box, ignoring my usual job of protecting my ipod, camera, and wallet in my purse, and practically ran the 3 blocks back to my apartment and up those dreaded stairs. It was true! This soda was code for diet coke!

At first I wondered it this was going to be a let down. I feared that maybe I had over exaggerated the difference between coca light and diet coke in my head, and having grown accustomed to drinking coca light with revulsion, I may not be able to tell the difference in the diet coke. Oh but how silly that fear turned out to be. The sweet taste of aspartame without disgusting sweeteners came back into my life. I've done some research and it turns out it's not all in my head. There are two different ingredients in coca light that are not in diet coke and they are "sweeteners" and "extracts of vegetables". Leave it to the French to put vegetables in coca light. I'm surprised there's not ham and cheese flavoring and a touch of alcohol in their coca light. I like my aspartame straight up and I'm happy to have three cans of it still waiting for me.

Along with the diet coke were tights tall enough for me, underwear, and to my happiness and frightenedness, swiss roll cakes. I may or may not have once upon a time had a problem with swiss roll cakes that caused me to gain obscene amounts of weight. And I may or may not have not eaten them for eight years for fear that once I started I would not stop, until in a moment of panic and desperate need this summer I may or may not have eaten five packs (of a six pack box) before throwing the box in the trash and making my roommate take the trash out. To my great pleasure, there were only four. And I have managed to eat only two of them.

Moral of the story: You can send me diet coke! And it won't explode! Wooo! But please, for the love of all that is holy, do not put any swiss roll cakes in with them. 4 I can handle, but anymore might do me in and send me back to 7th grade. Which wasn't a pretty time - I've burned most of the pictures but otherwise I would prove it. Anyway, if you feel suddenly urged to send me diet coke, here is my address!

I'm off to do my French homework. And maybe eat a swiss roll cake....or two

The Paris Blues

Paris is cold. And rainy. And windy. And most of my friends here have friends from home visiting this week during spring break. And all my friends have managed to finish college and therefore no longer have spring break. And I'm feeling disenchanted. So I've decided to make a list of things I do not like about Paris, and a list of things I do like.

I Do Not Like:
Nobody speaks English, at least not that they let on until you've stood butchering their language for 10 minutes. Except in McDonalds, where they find my presence thrilling, and I, theirs.

I don't have a work visa, and therefore don't have a job and therefore, am twindling down my bank account

There is no diet coke

There is no skim milk

Everybody smokes

The dollar is weak, the euro is strong

My friends are not in Paris

Yes, we don't have the best president. But frankly, neither do you. Stop picking on the popular
girl just because she's popular and you're not.

Instant coffee or espresso being the only options.

I DO Like:
It's totally acceptable to have a glass of wine at any time of day

Cheese. Fromage. Queso. I've mastered that language

When I walk into my French building I hear people speaking a million different languages and I really feel part of an international community.

Baguettes

Chocolate macaroon balls of deliciousness

Walking a million flights of stairs a day to cancel out aforementioned balls of deliciousness. And cheese, and baguettes, and wine.

The Sacre Coeur

Seeing the Eiffel Tower from my classroom

Getting really excited every time I understand a word in French

Things I Miss About America:
People

Diet coke

Skim milk

Meijer

Target

The dollar

Eating lunch via the food samples of Whole Foods

New York

DC

East Lansing (Sorry, Ann Arbor, not making the cut. I may be homesick, but not desperate)

Not doing blank x 1.54 every time I buy something.

Being able to communicate.


Alright. That was good to get out of my system. It's a bit sad how much of those lists revolve around cheese and chocolate and diet coke and coffee. If I have a stroke or heart attack at age 25, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to say why.

The Weather, The Water, The Woo

In a really tragic turn of events, Paris has turned cold. Freezing cold. It's like, in the thirties. Yes. I'm from Michigan. Yes, I'm used to the cold. But this is absurd. Don't give me a January and February full of 50s and 60s and picnics and lovely sunny walks around Paris, and then hit me with freezing rain and freezing temperatures as Spring approaches. That is just wrong. I might, however, be less bitter about it had I bothered to look on the window today before I left for school and not worn no coat, no umbrella, and no boots. C'est la vie.

* * * *

Yesterday, Roomie came home from work and as I was filling my water bottle at the sink started yelling in French. Finally, it switched to English, and I could understand.

"You don't drink ze water." She said. "My friend, she has told me zat zere is a probleme wiz zhe terroriste, you know, bin Laden"

Yes, I thought, I'm familiar with this bin Laden character you speak of.

"She says zere is problem wiz zhe water, how you say javel?"

I pause the conversation to look up javel in my new trendy dictionary - it means
basically water from the sink. Roomie continues.

"Zhe terroristes, zey want to put gnldsak (she says a word in French, I stare blankly, she tries again) ze bad stuff zat eet makes you sick and it kills you (I nod, now understanding) zey want to put it into ze water in Paris and so ze government, zey put a lot of chemicals in ze water to make it get rid of the aslgksngd (she says French word again) and so it is not good to drink zis week."

Now, Roomie often talks about how because of the war we started the terrorists are mad and that since the US, Spain, and England have been attacked, it is now France's turn. I often try to make the case that since France is not a part of the war, they should have a free pass on bombing, but she seems pretty convinced of it. Which made me question the validity of this claim. But, to be on the safe side, or rather, because I have a tendency to be a bit of a hypochondriac/believe anything I'm told, and because I remembered thinking on Friday that the water tasted funny but maybe I was just hung over, I walked myself down to the Franprix and bought some bottled water (Mon Dieu! I hate paying for water!).

Today I went to French class and asked my teacher (who, I recently decided and found someone who agrees, looks like the teacher in the children's book where their regular teacher gets sick and they have a new substitute teacher who looks like a witch and has frizzy black hair. We can't remember the name of the book, if anyone can name it, I will pay them in a postcard) about said water crisis in Paris. With a huffy look on her face she said something in French. She could tell by the blank look on my face that I had gotten approximately three words and launched into her seldom heard flawless English to explain to me that the water in Paris is perfect and two years ago they tried to put biological destruction in it but now it is fine.

I have returned to drinking good old fashioned tap water.

* * * *

Roomie has been spending more time than usual in the apartment. I hope this does not mean she is breaking up with her boyfriend because I enjoy the benefits of a roommate whose boyfriend owns a bar. However, this has given me the opportunity to use her Frenchness to my advantage. I often have her correct my homework so I can appear to be a star student in class. Sometimes though, she teaches me more casual French and when I read it in class I get a funny look from my teacher - I think she might be on to me.

The other day, we were learning the difference between the following phrases:

Qu'est-ce que Qu'est-ce qui

Qui est-ce que Qui est-ce qui

I know, it seems like a game of "Which of these thing is not like the other" only the options aren't Orange, Banana, Potato. Or something. But it's not. And frankly, I still don't know the difference. But it all led to a very humorous scenario. This is the French background you need to know to appreciate the story: Que = what, qui =who.

"Roomie," I asked, pointing to the page where the mess of quis and ques was, "can you explain to me the difference between these?"

She studied it for a long time. Like, a really long time.

"Okay, zis is it," she said, looking confident but not sounding all that confident. "Que is what, qui is woooo"

"What?" I asked.

"Que," She said. "Qui, is woo"

"Qui is what?" I asked.

"Wooo," she said. "Qui is wooo"

"Wooo?" I said. To be fair, I should have gotten it by this point but sometimes when you speak French all day you no longer understand broken English.

"Oui, qui is woo. Que is what," She answered, clearly not understanding my apparent loss of intelligence.

"Oh!! Who! Qui is who? I mean, wooo?" I asked.

"Yes," Clearly, she was happy she was making progress with me. "Qui is woo, que is what. You understand?"

I didn't understand. It was all still beyond me. But it gave me a glimpse into the fact that the English language also makes very little sense. Roomie still says woo. Sometimes I repeat who back to her, but bless her heart it must be like when I say a word with an R in it to her. I butcher her language, she can take a couple swipes at mine.

* * * *

It is almost 2 am in Paris and I am obsessive compulsively checking the election results. It's bizarre but every step of this election feels so important. Like the whole world is watching to make sure we don't fuck it up again. I'm hoping a winner will be chosen tonight so the Frenchies will go back to their favorite past time - making fun of Bush - instead of trying to understand (through asking me) the idea of a caucus.