I was stressed out, I was tired, I had to rush to the airport and by then I was seriously starting to wonder whether that was a good idea to hop on a plane to Texas for just two days right before three mad work weeks that would take me from DC to Pittsburgh to Istanbul.
After a crazy attempt to innovate and taste a meatball sandwich (I know, I know. I thought I'd be adventurous. I won't do it again) which promptly ended up in the trash, I was delirious enough to buy the "cheese and crakers" pack sold on the aircraft, only to discover that if there were a lot of crakers, the cheese (and it's quite flattering to call it that) was the solitary type.
By the time I landed in Dallas, waiting for a hotel shuttle that was in no hurry to come take me to a charmless Hilton nested between two highways, I had made up my mind: this was a mistake. This wedding of a friend I hadn't seen in several years, whose wife to be I hadn't even met, with friends of his who would barely remember they'd hosted me seven years ago in Mexico.
That was last weekend by the way. And I had a blast.
Why? Because Texas with a group of Mexican, and handful of Colombians, some Spanish-speaking Americans and a fellow blond French girl is hard to compete with.
Because swapping the golden sandals that match my fancy dress for cow-boy boots that match my cowboy hat was exhilarting and much better for my toes. And because cabron, it's so good to be around spontaneous and affectionate people!
From the moment I met these guys in the lobby on the Friday, it was easy. Easy to talk to the people I didn't know. Easy to switch from Spanish to English in the same conversation without having to think. To wander down the old streets of Forthworth on Saturday, looking for the hats a bunch of us had decided to wear. To discuss the charms of Palenque in Chiapas, from where Raul's family is, while sharing a turkey leg. To set my DC life aside for a moment and not even talk about it.
It was such a relaxed afternoon that it was after 4 pm when we left Fort Worth and after 5 when we managed to make our way back to the hotel (east Texas seems to be just an endless ballet of cars on infinite highways) for a wedding that was due to start at 6. Even though that was just the civil ceremony, a sort of rehearsal before the massive Mexico-based sequel in November, I would have lost my nerves hours earlier if I had been the groom, or, as a matter of fact, the bride waiting at the hotel!
It was not about the food (hum!). It was not about the setting. It was about a great mix of people grinning under their sombreros, celebrating the marriage of two cultures and dancing to the music of a Texan country band (who thought they were never going to be able to leave when Raul grabbed the mic to sing whatever he could find on his ipod!)
And I got invited to dance! After weeks of not being invited by anyone even to grab a sandwich, that was like breathing in my native Alps.
And did I mention the crazy cousin who offered her affection to all the males in the room? She dropped half dead on a table around 2am and was reportedly picked up by the police.
So, sure, there was Texas. The hotel patio where a sign warns you that you can't enter with your guns. The pink plastic riffles for ladies at the outdoor shop (yes!). The buffalo steak that reconciled me with food for the weekend.
But most of all, there were people. And not even the report on financial stability that I painstakingly tried to read on the flight back could spoil that soothing feeling at the end of the weekend.
Now I just wonder: when am I ever going to wear this vaquera outfit again?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Mademoiselle Simone
She's short and chubby, always in good spirits and she laughs at my jokes. She says Lumberjack's my "booboo" and keeps track of my crazy traveling. She calls me miss Sandrine and I call her miss Simone. We officially became friends tonight.
In this haze of crazy work days which I am afraid are to become the norm, Simone (she said it's spelt Samone but it can't really sink in) brings me back to a sunnier place. This crazy 21-year-old Californian, who got her huge tatoo in the neck on a whim this month, adores a puppy who won't let her sleep and is friendly to everybody coming in and out of my office building, is the one person in my daily life I feel comfortable chatting away with.
So tonight after my volunteering (an experience which will no doubt provide material for many future posts!) I stopped by her booth and spent a while there, discussing the dress I'll wear at my Texas wedding this weekend, what it takes to make a trip special and how hard it is to make friends in Washington. I got updated on the puppy, found out about the nearly two hours it takes her to get home and heard stories of her Internet chatting with what turns out to be freaks.
A few late workers went by. So did a few buses. There was nowhere I would rather have been than this building lobby.
When I was 18 (don't remind me how old I am now) my close friend Gégé and I traveled to Crete for a week of interesting adventures that could only have happened to a naive and insane pair like us. One day a local guide, on the grouchy side but who didn't resist the French charm for long, declared he had found the perfect nicknames for us: little smile and big smile (I bet you know exactly which I was.)
It looks like I've found my big smile partner here. It's certainly no Crete, nor even a place where you can picture yourself sipping ouzo. We may never do together all these things we deam to do with the friends we don't have yet. But it's much better than a day without sun.
In this haze of crazy work days which I am afraid are to become the norm, Simone (she said it's spelt Samone but it can't really sink in) brings me back to a sunnier place. This crazy 21-year-old Californian, who got her huge tatoo in the neck on a whim this month, adores a puppy who won't let her sleep and is friendly to everybody coming in and out of my office building, is the one person in my daily life I feel comfortable chatting away with.
So tonight after my volunteering (an experience which will no doubt provide material for many future posts!) I stopped by her booth and spent a while there, discussing the dress I'll wear at my Texas wedding this weekend, what it takes to make a trip special and how hard it is to make friends in Washington. I got updated on the puppy, found out about the nearly two hours it takes her to get home and heard stories of her Internet chatting with what turns out to be freaks.
A few late workers went by. So did a few buses. There was nowhere I would rather have been than this building lobby.
When I was 18 (don't remind me how old I am now) my close friend Gégé and I traveled to Crete for a week of interesting adventures that could only have happened to a naive and insane pair like us. One day a local guide, on the grouchy side but who didn't resist the French charm for long, declared he had found the perfect nicknames for us: little smile and big smile (I bet you know exactly which I was.)
It looks like I've found my big smile partner here. It's certainly no Crete, nor even a place where you can picture yourself sipping ouzo. We may never do together all these things we deam to do with the friends we don't have yet. But it's much better than a day without sun.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Oh my God, the accent!
Good evening readers. Your jellyfish has been following the current this week and finds herself in Lumberjackland for a few days (I'm going to watch him play hockey tonight! He is terrified, evidemment, even though he got a taste a few months ago for the type of hockey I'm used to seeing in my little alpine hometown, which I don't believe is very impressive for a Canadian!)
Not a good excuse for a blogging silence, especially with all the new experiences last week had to offer. But one post at a time, so let me give you a glimpse of my Wednesday night and my first encounter with the ``change your accent'' attitude.
I have traveled a fair bit and it's my pride to have friends from all over the place but never before had I been in one room with such a wild mix of nationalities. My ``standard speech class,'' a polite name for the ``reduce your accent and blend in, you foreigner'' class, was like the United Nations. From Mongolia to Italy to Brazil to Russia, here we all were. A dozen eager adults who, for a variety of reasons, were willing to shell out a few hundred bucks and spend two hours a week forcing unnatural sounds out of their Colombian and French and Italian jaws.
And what was the main reason for that? Well ladies and gentlemen, that's where I felt moved. For a majority of attendees, the main motivation for this class was...simply to be understood by Americans!
Quite logical, you may say.
Except that all these people had a respectable level of English and that they were all perfectly understandable to my ears.
So in the end, for at least half of my classmates, this is what it comes down to: an extra effort so that their American interlocutor won't put an early end to a potentially fruitful dialogue by exclaiming ``What's that?!'' (one of my top three most hated phrases in English.)
I found it admirable.
Beyond that, the cases varied: if one was tired of not being called back after auditions, most of the group didn't have the ambition to act for a living but simply felt it would help them in their daily life. I begged to differ (after all, a French accent has never hurt any woman trying to make contacts in Washington, so why would I want to drop it?) and commented that the speech class had been presented to me as the key to an acting class, which I was longing to take.
But I tried to convey that with humour. I don't think adding to the sulking/blase French stereotype would have been a good idea.
That said, in some ways, cliches caught up with us in that empty classroom. My Brazilian colleague was attractive and tanned; the Chinese student wanted to reach ``excellency;'' and the Slavic late comer -- I think Russian, but I need to check -- confirmed the bluntness we sometimes associate with that part of the world.
My Slavic classmate entered just as my Indian colleague was standing, explaining her decision to attend. A long and lively speech, full of anecdotes and smiles. Sergei, when his turn came, fired right away. ``I came in, I thought she was the teacher,'' he said. ``I thought `Oh my God, the accent!'''
All that said without a smile, of course.
I think even though I'm note taking an acting class this semester, I may still be in for standup comedy every week.
The teacher is friendly and is trying to learn French (which gives her an automatic good ranking on my likeable scale) and she trained journalists seeking to lose their regional accent for years before focusing now on little creatures like us.
The one thing I came away with during that first session is simple but huge! While we were repeating weird phrases like ``what a to do to die today, at a minute or two, to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do,'' she ordered us to say them with a smile.
That's because Americans speak with a smile, she said, which helps explain the way they pronounce their vowels in an horizontal way, as opposed to a vertical one (like the Brits who wouldn't be caught dead smiling.). So try the ``what a to do..'' with a smile. Isn't it amazing?
I should be careful though. I have been told in the U.S. that I don't smile enough. A little more work on my zygomatic muscle and my core Frenchness may be endangered.
Not a good excuse for a blogging silence, especially with all the new experiences last week had to offer. But one post at a time, so let me give you a glimpse of my Wednesday night and my first encounter with the ``change your accent'' attitude.
I have traveled a fair bit and it's my pride to have friends from all over the place but never before had I been in one room with such a wild mix of nationalities. My ``standard speech class,'' a polite name for the ``reduce your accent and blend in, you foreigner'' class, was like the United Nations. From Mongolia to Italy to Brazil to Russia, here we all were. A dozen eager adults who, for a variety of reasons, were willing to shell out a few hundred bucks and spend two hours a week forcing unnatural sounds out of their Colombian and French and Italian jaws.
And what was the main reason for that? Well ladies and gentlemen, that's where I felt moved. For a majority of attendees, the main motivation for this class was...simply to be understood by Americans!
Quite logical, you may say.
Except that all these people had a respectable level of English and that they were all perfectly understandable to my ears.
So in the end, for at least half of my classmates, this is what it comes down to: an extra effort so that their American interlocutor won't put an early end to a potentially fruitful dialogue by exclaiming ``What's that?!'' (one of my top three most hated phrases in English.)
I found it admirable.
Beyond that, the cases varied: if one was tired of not being called back after auditions, most of the group didn't have the ambition to act for a living but simply felt it would help them in their daily life. I begged to differ (after all, a French accent has never hurt any woman trying to make contacts in Washington, so why would I want to drop it?) and commented that the speech class had been presented to me as the key to an acting class, which I was longing to take.
But I tried to convey that with humour. I don't think adding to the sulking/blase French stereotype would have been a good idea.
That said, in some ways, cliches caught up with us in that empty classroom. My Brazilian colleague was attractive and tanned; the Chinese student wanted to reach ``excellency;'' and the Slavic late comer -- I think Russian, but I need to check -- confirmed the bluntness we sometimes associate with that part of the world.
My Slavic classmate entered just as my Indian colleague was standing, explaining her decision to attend. A long and lively speech, full of anecdotes and smiles. Sergei, when his turn came, fired right away. ``I came in, I thought she was the teacher,'' he said. ``I thought `Oh my God, the accent!'''
All that said without a smile, of course.
I think even though I'm note taking an acting class this semester, I may still be in for standup comedy every week.
The teacher is friendly and is trying to learn French (which gives her an automatic good ranking on my likeable scale) and she trained journalists seeking to lose their regional accent for years before focusing now on little creatures like us.
The one thing I came away with during that first session is simple but huge! While we were repeating weird phrases like ``what a to do to die today, at a minute or two, to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do,'' she ordered us to say them with a smile.
That's because Americans speak with a smile, she said, which helps explain the way they pronounce their vowels in an horizontal way, as opposed to a vertical one (like the Brits who wouldn't be caught dead smiling.). So try the ``what a to do..'' with a smile. Isn't it amazing?
I should be careful though. I have been told in the U.S. that I don't smile enough. A little more work on my zygomatic muscle and my core Frenchness may be endangered.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Leaves also fall in Washington
This morning I received a nice little note from Lumberjack describing his impressions while waiting at the bus stop. "You can tell the summer is ending in this government village," he wrote. "There's more traffic and the light is different." (He also lives in a government village. Even smaller than mine though.)
The light. The coming out of a long nap. In a few words, Lumberjack brought me back to what I will be missing this year: la rentrée in Paris.
La rentrée is a big deal in France. That's when we officially resume working after the summer break. That's when we make good resolutions and start all sort of activities that we'll struggle continuing a few months later. The air is chillier, the days are shorter, and yet there's so much pleasure in observing the capital getting ready for the cold!
I see la rentrée like a Sempé drawing where a man with a floating smile would stand on a bridge, eating le croûton of his baguette while watching the bateaux-mouches below, school kids running past him, drivers insulting each other in the background and blasés students smoking in a corner. One of his signature captions would say something like "The simplicity of this moment, so full of peace and harmony, made him wonder whether he should indulge and eat the artichoke and the paté en croûte he had bought earlier when returning home."
"Leaves also fall in DC," a friend told me tonight.
To me la rentrée is a spirit, a feeling that I belong to the city, that the urban poetry also is mine. That's why I am so nostalgic of my city tonight. I have yet to find Washington's poetry. I haven't given up trying.
The light. The coming out of a long nap. In a few words, Lumberjack brought me back to what I will be missing this year: la rentrée in Paris.
La rentrée is a big deal in France. That's when we officially resume working after the summer break. That's when we make good resolutions and start all sort of activities that we'll struggle continuing a few months later. The air is chillier, the days are shorter, and yet there's so much pleasure in observing the capital getting ready for the cold!
I see la rentrée like a Sempé drawing where a man with a floating smile would stand on a bridge, eating le croûton of his baguette while watching the bateaux-mouches below, school kids running past him, drivers insulting each other in the background and blasés students smoking in a corner. One of his signature captions would say something like "The simplicity of this moment, so full of peace and harmony, made him wonder whether he should indulge and eat the artichoke and the paté en croûte he had bought earlier when returning home."
"Leaves also fall in DC," a friend told me tonight.
To me la rentrée is a spirit, a feeling that I belong to the city, that the urban poetry also is mine. That's why I am so nostalgic of my city tonight. I have yet to find Washington's poetry. I haven't given up trying.
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