Tah-dah! There you have it!
It was a beautiful day. Perhaps the first beautiful day I've seen here.
I walked to church in my hiking shoes (to break them in), and at church I met an American girl who lives kind of near me and wanted to walk home, so I walked back, too. And my feet didn't hurt. And she and I spoke (very poor) French all the way home! I don't mean to brag here, but even I can't believe how much French I already know. It is boggling my mind just how quickly I can learn if I put my mind to it. At church I could almost follow a story told in a talk, and I just about understood some of the questions asked in Sunday School, but not quite enough to offer up an answer. But I did read aloud from my French Book of Mormon for the first time ever in front of people! Alma 8:8-9. It was choppy, but I don't think I mutilated any of the words too badly..
In the afternoon, I talked to my Daddy on skype for Father Day (Hi Dad!!) and met up with some church friends for a walking tour of some Parisian sights. I swear these French kids took more pictures at their own monuments than the Japanese tourists do! I think they just like photos, though, 'cause last week at Stake Conference, we were having a picnic downstairs in a standard church building classroom (read: ugly), and there was a picture-taking frenzy! I stayed out of it--who needs a billion pics of the random girl from Boston anyway? But a bunch of images of me at Versailles with everyone ended up on Facebook anyway! I'm totally over pictures, really, but even I got into the spirit today at the Eiffel Tower. I almost couldn't help myself. The outcome only stands as a further witness to the inanity of too many photographs.
Interestingly enough, two men asked for my number today. One was an Egyptian. He had to have been 45 or older. What was he doing hitting on me? I look like I'm 17 for pete's sake! He sat next to me on the train. I told him that my cell was a work phone, and I was glad when I could honestly extricate myself at my stop.
The other guy was probably mid-30's, so not so bad. This was as I was walking home by myself through an iffy neighborhood. (Hey, I didn't know it was iffy until I was in it, okay?) I had just left my French friends on the Champs d'Elysees because I was tired of following everyone around, and the fastest way home was through some smaller streets and over the train tracks. Who was I to know the streets were going to be deserted and creepy? Some homeless guy barked at me at one point. Odd.
Anyway, I was walking past these two guys as they were walking down the sidewalk (they weren't walking fast enough for me /slash/ I think they may have been slowing down so I could overtake them). The one closest to me said, "Ca va?" ("How's it going?") as I was about to pass him. I groaned within myself because my first line of defense is the Ignore, but since the guy was six inches from my shoulder and looking straight at me, that wouldn't really work. So I looked back at him and said, "Va bien." I may have smiled, too, because that's just what I do, unfortunately. He started talking to me, but I had no idea what he was asking. I told him my French was bad. He asked simpler questions. We started a conversation. What? I'll take any French practice I can get! I didn't give him any way to track me down, unless he can pinpoint a nanny interested in dress history working in the 9th. Hm. Maybe he could... That would be quite a feat, though. I'd probably bake him a cake to celebrate his finding skills if he did.
Anyway, he is a fork lift operator, as near as I could tell. At one point I asked him what a word meant in French, and I tried explaining what I thought it meant. This was a momentous moment for me, when I spoke French the fastest I think I ever have! I'm pretty sure I was using all the right words and stuff, but the guy and his friend just looked blankly at me. Maybe verb tenses were a bit over their heads. He said that he liked my spunk and my enthusiasm, though, no matter that he didn't know what I was talking about. His friend was the seedier of the two, with one dread hanging from his head; not a mono-dread, mind, just one long dread with the rest of his hair cut short. That guy thought my interest in dress was cool. We were talking about history by the time we parted ways. The first guy then asked me for my number, but I politely refused to give it to him. The other guy asked me if I smoked weed, but I said no. Then they said, "Bonne soiree", and the guy with the dread wished me good travels and good work in English, and I said "Thanks". And that was that.
I have a feeling that I was not exactly what these guys were expecting. I'm glad to have conversed freely with them and smiled at them and treated them like normal human beings, because I think it made them see me as a human being, rather than just a girl on the street. Maybe*. Or maybe I'm just naive and trust people to easily. Could be that. But hey, I came through that trial by fire just fine, thanks, for all my naivety.
:)
Now I'm home and heading to bed. Tomorrow I have Sophie! I'm starting to like that girl...
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