Culture Battles

I have won a battle of bitchiness with a French woman. I feel rather accomplished.

So today I went grocery shopping. This wasn’t that unordinary; I go once, maybe twice a week. Usually spend about ten euros. I wander around the store, usually find some good things to eat. Today, I was in the cheese aisle, I believe it was, when I saw this little girl running around while her mother shopped. Now, people can criticize American parenting all they want; French parenting ain’t any better. So I’m watching this girl, maybe five or six, run around, grabbing things, being crazy. I roll my eyes and ignore her. The little girl then decided that it would be a good idea to run into me, full-speed, knocking me over.

I get up, grumbling to myself, only to see a very angry French Mother. She starts yelling at me, and continues for about five minutes, about how I should watch out for her daughter, and I was irresponsible for running into her, and how rude Americans are. I tried to escape several times, but she yelled at me more when I tried to do so. Eventually she walks off in a huff, and I sigh and continue on with my shopping. I finish my trip by using the easy self-check out things; they’re basically the exact same things as in the States, so I like them a great deal. As I’m ringing up my items, who should come in line behind me but Madame French Bitch. Once she realizes it’s me, she rolls her eyes, insisting that I hurry up. Her little girl is squirming, not liking the idea of standing in line. So I just smile sweetly and continue scanning my items. My total was around twelve euros, and I had a ten in my pocket. Instead, I pulled out my coin purse, and slowly, painstakingly took the effort to search through it, finding every single last coin to make that purchase. A couple of times I even “accidentally” pulled out some pounds and said “oops! My bad, that’s not a Euro!” She continued to glare at me and say “dépêche-toi, dépêche-toi, utilise les notes!” But I’d merely shrug and smile, saying, “pardon, Madame, je suis étudiante, je n’ai pas de notes, je suis pauvre.” I had a great amount of fun. Like really, taking five minutes to put in my money shouldn’t be so enjoyable. But finally, I had to pack away my purchases and move along. I made sure to smile cheerily at la Madame and wish her a “bonne soirée” before I left, though.

In other news. It has gotten very, very cold in Bordeaux suddenly. Naturally, cold is a relative term, so let me define. Right now, I looked up on the weather site, and it says that it’s “50F/10C degrees, feels like 44/7.” It was 75/24, at least, on Monday. Now, anyone who knows me understands that I love the cold. I thrive in it, I’m excited to live in a place with actual weather changes. So while it’s a little sudden (I walked outside this morning to 38/3 degree freezing cold, expecting it to be about twice that temperature) I am loving it. What I am not loving is hearing everyone else COMPLAIN about it. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, I know it’s cold, you’ve said it ten times in the past five minutes. No, we don’t seem to have a heater. No, I don’t particularly care, it’s called a blanket. I don’t want to hear everyone moan and whine about how this is ridiculous, why is it so cold, yadda yadda yadda. Shut up. Really. It’s Europe. It’s not California, it’s Europe. If you wanted to wear flip flops all year, you should have stayed in California. Rant over.

New rant commencing. Methodology. I want to like the professor, I really do. But it’s really quite frustrating to have her always talk about how the French are so accepting of other people’s ideas, and then give us a quote and tell us that the only correct interpretation of the quote is hers, and if you came up with something else it doesn’t matter how good your writing or whatever you did is, it’s wrong if it doesn’t agree with her mindset. It’s very frustrating, because I’d like to think I’m smarter than that. I can’t have someone tell me that this is how I need to think and write, because I have my own thoughts, my own feelings, my opinions, and my own damn interpretations. And I don’t really appreciate walking up to the prof to show her my work for her to glance at it and cross it out, saying, “no, I don’t like this, it’s wrong.” And people say the French are open to new ideas.

I apologize for this rather rant-filled, angsty blog. Next time will be more cheery.