I’m terrified that I don’t speak French. I’m expecting to be treated like a leper. We arrived at Dudu’s place, a friend of Marcelo’s from Brasil… He lives off of the Ménilmontant station. We’ll be staying here for the next 10 days.
We walked a small bit to get lunch. We stopped at some cliché French bistro which was my first taste of being far from home, in terms of attempting to order and be courteous in French, as opposed to being the stereotypical, “I’m American, you speak English?” Despite a whole year of French in Camden County College, I’m still incredibly awkward at it. Anyhow, I had some figs with parmesan, followed with a tuna steak. Very nice! Then we made our way back to Dudu’s where we passed out for easily a few hours.
I awoke to find Marcelo getting ready, as some people were coming over the apartment for a party… I went back to sleep for probably another hour, until I started to hear voices in the other room which made me drag my ass out of bed and get into the shower.
There were probably 10-15 people here, a mix of Brazilian, French, English, and Chilean… It was mostly all women for the first couple of hours, which typically I can’t handle, but I did pretty well considering… Later some guys showed up and I was immediately more comfortable. I guess it’s a guys ability to just lay it all out… They’re crude and really don’t need to impress anyone. Women, however, always seem to paint on a different face for every person they speak to, and I found at a very young age that it is just too much to keep up with. I’ve tried to weed out unnecessary conversation and niceties, preferring to choose to spend my time with people who can contribute to my life. Callous, maybe, but the way I turned out somehow. Plus, the one time I decided to have a female “bestie” it turned out to be a sloppy disaster, so never again… Unless she’s a tomboy.
Anyhow, the evening was fine. I drank too much wine, and even more cachaca, and it wasn’t until some girl in a red one-piece jumpsuit scoffed at me and handed me some pretty hostile facial expressions for having to speak English on MY account, that I became upset at first, then angry…
First off, you’re not even French yourself, you’re Brazilian, secondly, you have a big nose, and thirdly, who told you what you were wearing was cute? I can’t really explain the 10 second interaction that happened, but it bummed me out that a human being would think it’s ok to treat another human being like that. I’m over people hating on Americans just because our government sucks. I can’t control where I was born, like you can’t control what your nose looks like, so why wouldn’t we all just get along?
Anyhow, I drunkenly bitched at Marcelo about the whole situation in the kitchen, then we went to bed.
One other thing real quick, business class is THE DEAL!!! Tons of food, GOOD food, tons of drinks, strong drinks, TV, movies, games, all free mind you, and a seat that lays down into a bed!? Wow!!! I’ve never done anything like that before!
