There are endless misunderstandings as a study abroad student. Everything seems to go wrong ALL the time, anything from a trip to the grocery store to a simple phone call can make you want to bash your head against the wall and wonder how you came to be so stupid. The best way to study abroad is to learn to laugh at yourself, or you will spend your whole trip crying. Fortunately, I was already used to laughing at myself because my blond moments are not limited to France, but I'm pretty sure I've never had this many misunderstandings at home...
Polite Rocks
So yesterday I had my first Art History exam. I was studying before the exam with Lindsey and we were discussing in Franglais (half french half english) the time periods we had learned. Our test was focusing on the Paleolithique and the Neolithique and we had to know how to distinguish between the two. I was looking through my notes and translated something I had written out lout. "Don't forget" I said to Lindsey "that the Neolithique is the Age of Polite Rocks." "WHAT???????" Was about her response. I'm like, "yeah, that's when they were more advanced so the stuff they made was nicer, not as rough, polite, you know!" Haha, that was not the case...the Neolithique was the Age of POLISHED rocks...not polite rocks, I had misunderstood the French in class. Ha, and I thought my chemistry class last semester was hard to understand!
Fire Departments
My credit card was giving me troubles, so I finally decided to call my bank. I whipped out my calling card and started dialing the number to make a call to the USA. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty excited to be able to talk to someone in an intelligent manner, in English. So imagine my surprise when I hear a "bonjour!" on the other end of the line. "Bonjour?" I replied and quickly tried to explain that I had called the wrong number, but I don't know the word for wrong and I don't know the word for correct, so I basically just said I had called a bad number. The lady on the other end wanted to know who I was trying to call, I tried to explain that it was supposed to be a phone card, and apologized for my bad French. Finally, she said in English: DO YOU NEED HELP? No? I don't need help? I can figure it out on my own I think..."Ok, because this is the FIRE DEPARTMENT" oops...
Tampons
Lindsey and I were checking out a French thrift store and she happened to purchase 15 euros worth of stuff. The lady gave her a receipt that was like a check off sheet, every time you spend 15 euros you get to fill in a box and eventually get something free. I have included the paper here for your viewing pleasure :) We wondered what she would get for free, then we looked at the bottom of the paper, it read that 15 euros gets you 1 tampon...what??? Why on earth would a store be giving out 1 free tampon? What if a guy made a purchase? We said nothing, but showed it to a French friend later. This girl knew some English and when she saw the paper, and the confused look on our faces she started cracking up and explained that "tampon" is the french word for "stamp" wow.
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