American modesty vs. French sexy

I was having lunch with a friend the other day when I noticed that the blouse one of the waitresses was wearing looked familiar. After a few seconds, it clicked – she was wearing the same blouse I was and in the same color. The blouses were both sheer and black, there was one difference though. I wore a camisole under mine whereas Mlle waitress had on only a bra under hers. When I pointed this out to my friend (who is French btw) and jokingly said it was an example of the differences between how the French and Americans dress, she smirked and said that French women are sexy. I suppose that’s one word for it….

Fire

The roomy nearly burned down the apartment, well not really but she had two kitchen fires in the same evening. And she felt the need to tell me in detail about both. The first one I wouldn’t have even known about if she hadn’t said anything because it happened before I got home. This was one of those times when it might have been better not to share.

Rant

If you take public transportation and want to listen to music, use headphones! Just because you like the music, doesn’t mean the rest of us do.

Summer Is Here!!!

FYI - the rainier cherry was created in Washington state.

Fluent

I’m well chuffed. I made it through 3 hours of meetings, all in French! I didn’t speak much, but I understood everything and wasn’t completely exhausted afterwards. Now that’s progress…

Peace For A Piece?

On the bus this morning, a man was talking on his mobile phone (as often happens). I didn’t pay any attention to him until another man began speaking to him in a rather aggressive manner. The two men continued their back and forth for a few minutes with phone-man asking what the other guy’s problem was. Argue-guy replied that phone-man should speak more quietly while using his mobile phone because everyone else could hear him. When he said this, my internal reaction was – “Huh? Are you kidding??! I didn’t hear the man on the phone (granted I was listening to music) but I certainly hear you yelling at him across the aisle. If you have a problem with his volume, shut-up and lead by example.”

A few stops later I noticed phone-man go up to argue-guy. This second exchange was much tamer than the first one. I don't know what the men were saying to each other, but it appeared that phone-man was offering a piece of candy. Perhaps his Parisian commute equivalent of a white flag?

What’s That Smell??

Let me preface this post by saying that if something smells like a rotting animal corpse – I can’t eat it.

I was in my bedroom last night when I noticed an extremely unpleasant odor. It wasn’t there when I arrived home and I thought it was coming from somewhere in my room so I started sniffing around try to find the source. We live on the top floor and I was sure I’d find the rotting corpse of a bird (even though a bird has never flown into the apartment). After a few minutes I gave up and went into the kitchen to get something, as soon as I stepped out of my room the stench got much stronger and then it hit me – stinky French cheese!! I asked roomy what she ate for dinner; it turns out she had a cheese from her region of France. To make matters worse, roomy doesn’t rinse her dishes (the many joys of colocation will have to wait for another post) and I had a refresher course on cheese stink when I opened the dishwasher this morning. I put on the rinse cycle and made a quick exit while hoping that roomy finished all of the cheese….

Your English is really good!

I was at my local boulangerie (which received a write-up in Elle btw) and there were some Americans behind me in line. One of them commented that there were a lot of people and I responded that the line would go quickly. The guy looked surprised and told me that my English was good. Hmmm….thanks.

Do French women need special credit cards?

Société Générale is following in the footsteps of Bred and now has a “toute nouvelle collection de cartes bancaires dédiée aux femmes: la collection pour elles.” If you sign up for this card you get perks such as picking the look of your card (design options are floral, water drop and diamond), €400 towards purchasing a new purse if yours is stolen AND up to €300 is covered if you have a water leak, broken window or electricity outage and need a repair person to come out and fix the problem. I’ve been here nearly five years and I’m still amazed that stuff like this goes on. Are women really signing up for these cards? Who are they and what century do they live in?