day two: the rain (june 26th)

This morning I woke up around six am, completely starving having slept through dinner the night before. Both Karen and Garrett were still asleep and unable to feed me so, being the mature and capable young adult that I am, I went out to the bakery down the street and bought a loaf of bread and butter brick (butter doesnt come in sticks here. It would be like selling tablespoons of grease in America. "well this is cute but im going to need rougly eight hundred times this to do anything useful"). I was sure to change clothes first since my American flag wolf shirt doesnt quite give off the "probably native, or possibly Canadian" vibe Im trying to exhude.
I gave up trying to work the coffeemaker and faggot toaster that came with our two bedroom apartment (this is not a gay slur; faggot is an european appliance producer) and instead plopped my buttter brick on a dessert plate and took my breakfast to the balcony.
I took my first bite of bread just as the sun was beginning to rise and instantly fell in love. Hard. This was the most amazing bread id ever tasted. The crust was crunchy, the inside moist and warm, and it smelled the way bread is supposed to smell. Lets just say the bread and I grew very attatched.
Fine.
Cards on the table I ate half the loaf of bread.
At this point, I looked up at the sky, which had gone from a very romantic pink to stark grey. Then the heavens opened up.
Im talking like Noahs flood, end of times, drown the dinosaurs kind of rain. I stuffed what was left of the bread under my shirt and turned back to the sliding glass door.
I tugged once. Nothing.
Twice. No budge.
I thought first of the bread, then of my hair, and it quickly became clear that neither one was going to make it back inside. I tossed my soggy new boyfriend over the railing, and then started screaming "Karen help Im drowning" (obviously in a canadian accent in case our french neighbors overheard).
I made enough noise that Karen eventually came groggily out of her room, yanked open the door, to pull me inside: dripping wet, shivering, and seriously heartbroken over the loss of my bread.
She gave me a once over and started laughing. "Oh, God, what is it your Dad says? Hes totally right, you definitely die camping."
Reasons why this is unfair:
1. When I got hungry, I didnt sit on the floor and complain until someone brought me food the way I normally do. no; I got up and marched myself to the store to get food. Which, might I add in a foreign country is pretty darn resourceful.
2. in order to purchase said food, i slipped ten euros from Karens purse while she was sleeping. So if push came to shove, I could probably survive on the mean streets of deuville as a gypsy by picking pockets and committing petty thievery like the mischevious and loveable aladdin. i bet i could even train a pidgeon or something to be like abu. These are important survival techniques.
3. camping and the wild are completely different things. the wild has sharks and cougars. camping has boyscouts and smores. I could totally survive camping.
4. If, for some unknown reason, I actuallly did have to spend some time in the wild, I would not have to face either french toasters or rusty sliding doors.
4a. im stellar with animals (ie pidgeon Abu) and there is no doubt in my mind that if i complained for long enough, woodland creatures would lead me to food or dwarves (snow white style).
5. Karen really should have been more considerate considering that I just got out of a very serious relationship.

day one: planes trains and automobiles

It's impossible to understand French.
Reading I can get away with allright from four years of Spanish, but when people actually get around to speaking French, they hhve this nasty habbit of leaving off half the letters in every word.
Somewhere along the line these people must have gotten together and decided to say to the world "Oui. Oui! Ve are French and jew ahre naht ahnd ve ahre very importand and dew not have zie tyme tew say every letter on every word. Vat ees zie matter l'american? Ave Jew nevar heard of a silent z before?"
This of course makes French to English dictionaries completely useless with the end result that I have no idea what anybody is trying to tell me.
Yesterday I approached s man about directions and said: bonjour monsieur! Parles vous anglais? To which monsieurreplied: jfhfcgbn jgycgjjgj chdsfjkphgxdwqfchjk.
For the most part, I smile and nod encouragingly, hoping people think Im too mentally handicapped to respond and not just foreign.
Oh but I love it! Its an entire country of people who sit around and speak wildly beautiful gibberish. Speaking French feels like eating cotton candy; the words fill up your mouth with delicious fluff and then softly fade away. The syllables drip off your tongue, rich and decadent. English sounds so flat and ugly in comparison.
The Frenchman behind me on the plane was talking on his cell phone before we took off, muttering: "oui, oui...poutain. oui"
What a beautiful word! I thought to myself. Poutain! (Pronounced like poo-tahn). I said it under my breath the entire plane ride. Poo-tahn! Walking through Deauville Garrett and I passed back and forth the fve French words we knew hoping that pasderbys would think we were native "binjour!...arvoir!...poutain!" It wasn't until five hours later that the kindly hotel receptionist pulled me aside to explain that "poutain" loosely translates to "fuck " and could we please not say it quite so loudly since many of the guests had young children nearby.
Chalk one up for the ugly American.