1. Told someone “I didn’t know the business suit” instead of “I didn’t know the custom.”
2. Asked for “reason bread” instead of “raisin bread.”
3. “We don’t have any women” instead of “We’re not hungry.” This one got me laughed at by a whole street of restauranteurs.
4. Complimented a Dutch woman by telling her that “Hollandaise sauce speaks English very well.”
P.S. Haven’t been posting. Too busy speaking horrible French and eating delicious crepes.
In Spain, I am Daisy the American. This is what the Mexican´s father inexplicably thinks my name is. He introduces me as Daisy to neighbors, bartenders, and shopkeepers and once it´s said, it´s nearly impossible to get them to remember my actual name since Daisy is much easier to pronounce than “Yaymee.”
Papa Perez often opens with, “This is Daisy. She´s from Chicago, America.” Though I speak enough Spanish to communicate, having been identified as an American means that from henceforth the conversation will be conducted at kindergarten level using popular American catchphrases.
“Sorry, we don´t have any Big Macs or Coca-Cola from the U S of A. Would you like this? It is made with potatos,” they say, as they gesture to a whole, raw potato.
In France, I am Jamie Lee, du Mee-sooo-ree. They seem to think that because an international star chooses to go by both of those names, I do, too. They also seem to think that it’s really strange that I have two first names, not that I do. Well, Jean-Claude and Marie-Louise, would you feel more comfortable if I put a hyphen in there? (You’re not fooling anyone. That’s two names).
Conversations here are also conducted at kindergarten level, though they’re not exactly doing it to try to make things easier for me. “Would you like a crepe? I think that would not offend your American sensibilities.”
In the face of such condescension, there are two paths: one is to quietly accept it and through your deeds, prove their misconceptions wrong. The other is to put a crepe in your mouth and then spit it right back out onto the ground and yell, “Well, shit, y’all. That really offends my American sensibilities!”
Only time will tell what path Jamie/Daisy/Jamie Lee du Missouri will choose.
This morning the Madrid Airport was bombed, but I had arrived and left 24 hours before that happened. I´m safe.
A Spanish friend says of Paris:
Es una ciudad tan interesante, con tanta vida e historia que casi se puede olvidar la arrogancia de sus habitantes.
It is such an interesting city, with so much life and history that it’s almost possible to forget the arrogance of its inhabitants.
Ho, hum, so I kind of let the ball drop on the blogging. I have to say that I’m sorry, and also that it’s the fault of everyone who reads this. There just weren’t enough comments and general flattery to inflate my ego enough to make me want to go through the tedium of updating. Let me tell you a little something about the world, kid: If blogs were cars, they would be fueled by unleaded vanity.
Condemnations aside, my trip finished pretty well. It would be pretty difficult to remember and recount, oh say, the last month, but here is an anecdote from my last night in Paris:
My girlfriends and I went to a moderately priced French restaurant in search of a traditional French meal to celebrate being in Paris. Once we got the menu, there was something labelled “Filet de loup.” Translated literally, that means “wolf filet.” Instantly, our table was abuzz: wolf filet? How exotic! I didn’t know that they ate wolf in France! I don’t know, should we order it? I, being bold and never afraid to be on the cutting edge of wildlife cuisine, decided to take it. Of course, you drink red wine with wolf. ‘Cuz it’s like beef, right? [On a funny side note, when it came time to order the wine, my friend who ordered the lamb asked for white wine (normally you drink red wine with lamb). The waiter said insistently, in the this-is-a-faux-pas voice that the French have, "Red wine?" My friend said, "No, white." A few minutes later the waiter returned with a glass of red wine.] We spent about fifteen minutes eating our foie gras and snails and I was eagerly anticipating a big juicy wolf steak. Finally the time came and waiter lowered the plate in front of me to reveal a big fat piece of fish. Fish? What? I didn’t want any stinky fish, I wanted wolf! It was at this time that I realized how retarded it was to think that they would bring me a piece of wolf. Not only that, but I ordered the wrong wine for fish and the waiter apparently thought that I was such a lost cause that she didn’t even bother to interrogate me on my wine choice. It is really difficult to be in France where none of the food names begin with Mc-.
Actually, that’s not true, there are McDonald’s everywhere in France. The difference is that they have all kinds of French menu options like croissants and wine and it takes 30 minutes to get your food. I won’t say that the French don’t have a word for fast, but I will say that they barely have need to use it.
Maybe someday I will put my pictures from the trip up, but I can’t make any promises as I started to do it one day and found that it would take me approximately the rest of my life to upload five photos to Webshots.
After the demise of jamielee.net, perhaps this blog can transition into what the jamie lee domain once was. I doubt it, though, since jamielee.net was totally bitchin’. Until I figure out if I want to try to do anything with the old jamielee.net stuff, I guess that I will keep riding the “travel anecdotes” wave.
I would like to begin by saying that Spain is awesome. Much, much better than France. I have only been here for a day and a half, but I love it. The difference is the people. I think that they are much, much friendlier, and get along much better with Americans than the French do. In fact, I have spent a lot of time with the people that I am staying with saying bad things about the French (how quickly I can turn on a country).
Before I left for Spain, I met another Arab man in a park. We met to have coffee one day, and we talked a lot about America. He has been trying for 10 years to get a green card, and is moving to Canada next year to try to find a job and also hopefully improve his chances of getting a green card. He hates France. He is a computer engineer but is unable to find a job (he says) because he is Arab, and so he is a vendor at a fruit and vegetables market. He told me that he thinks that he will meet the woman of his dreams in America, someone like Bridget Jones or Ally McBeal (his ideal, not mine). I think that he was interested in me, because he mentioned that he really likes American women, but that it is difficult to meet them, and that fate brought us together, etc. It was amazing for me to encounter in real life someone who dreams of coming to America; it is surreal to hear someone speak about a place that you know very well like it is Paradise. He was even defensive when I tried to say anything critical about America! That kind of experience is the kind of thing that I think that someone has to experience for themselves. Il faut voyager. French= pretentious.
Anyway, signing off.
Unfortunately I have discovered that even travelling to the far corners of the earth will not extinguish a blog-reading addiction. I try to justify it by believing that everytime I read a blog, an angel gets its wings. That, or a tiny piece of my soul dies.
Did anyone notice that I hyphenated “bad-ass?” That was, in fact, not at all a “bad-ass” thing to do. From now on, if I need to express the sentiment I will do so like this: “Having two Z names is totally badass [sic].” Much more badass [sic], right?
Nothing much is happening right now, France-wise, as I am preparing to go to Madrid on Wednesday and begin the Magical Mystery Tour. There has been some talk of changing the itinerary for the Spanish trip to include a sojourn to one of the more remote of the Canary Islands. We’ll see. My “frequent” posting schedule will probably be interrupted from here on out as I will no longer be stationary and I doubt that The Mexican will have much patience if I want to blog in an internet cafe.
For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of the most famous church in Toulouse: Saint Sernin. I had originally planned to put some of my own pictures up here, but I haven’t yet had them taken off my Flashcard and put on CD. Maybe when I come back to France I will put up my pictures from Toulouse and Spain. Maybe.
For the last couple of weeks I have been giving English “lessons” to an Arab man whom I met in the street. One day he began talking to me and once he realized that I was foreign, asked if I would give him English lessons. He purchased an English phrase book which we hardly ever look at, not that a phrase book would be an effective way to learn English anyway. Mostly we spend the time talking in French, or I should say he speaks in French and I listen. I think that he mostly just needs someone to talk to, and I don’t really mind to listen as it is interesting to hear him talk about is childhood in Northern Africa. His father was Tunisian and his mother Algerian, and I don’t know what country he is a citizen of. He is a salesperson in a store in the Arab quarter that sells all kinds of things, kind of like an Arabic dollar-store. It is difficult to characterize our conversations because he talks about anything and everything that strikes his fancy. He doesn’t want to visit America because he says that things are really difficult for people “like him” right now in America. I have tried to open him up a little bit about this, but he prefers to talk about other things. Maybe next time I will have more to post about our conversations.
In other news, I really like soccer now, and my favorite player is Zinédine “Zizou” Zidane . He’s my favorite because he’s the most famous in France and the only French player that I can recognize, which I think is a really good reason for him to be my favorite. Oh, he’s also of Arabic descent and a symbol of hope for French-Arab relations, but how bad-ass is it to have two Z names??
