Lame

Okay, so I personally think that blogs without pictures are pretty lame. Sorry. And this is a short one, too--but that just means it's a consumable size.

One thing that has amazed me about France is how (especially if I keep my mouth shut) people think I'm French. This is extraordinary, because I have my own American image of the French being very fasionable (and being able to spell?), romantic, and so on, and so on. So when someone at MJC Duclair, after explaining the programs she directs, said, wait, you're American? I was blown away. I was again when I was walking around and someone handed me a political flyer and told me why I should vote for their candidate. But then I guess in the US, walking around being American is pretty normal, actually, so why wouldn't it be just-plain-vanilla to be French in France?

And back to the keeping-my-mouth-shut thing. Some days people tell me I barely have an accent, and others, I ask for something at a store and they have no idea what I'm saying. And people don't realize how my language is limited until I start trying to use it--which isn't incentive to use it. I finally realized, though, that I wouldn't get any better at speaking French if I didn't ever speak it while I'm here.