We are heading to England, Scotland and France for a three week trip this summer. Kind of excited about England and Scotland, but really have some anxiety about France. Heard too many bad comments about Parisians, whom we will be dealing with since we are only going to Paris. We will only be there for two nights and three days, so we should be able to handle it. Just fear the language barrier. I know we won't be the first or the last people to visit who do not speak French. I bought a French phrase book/dictionary, as if I could really decipher what someone speaking French in a normal pace would be saying. I can see me flipping through the tiny pages maniacally trying to catch a word or two and then pretending to understand them to save face. Saying "thank you" in really good French since I will have practiced that phrase over and over, and then starting the process all over again with the next kind face we think we see. This will be a good test of our intuition and our abilities to accurately read personalities by faces or very surface signs of human nature. I guess we will just have to rely on the mercy of the French we encounter and pray for a good experience. I can say,....it WILL be an experience for us,...whether good or bad.
3 comments:
will y'all be in arlington for work camp? i am bringing kristin for it. she chose it over another opportunity.
i hope you guys have an awesome time. i hope i get to see y'all. tell ellie and double "a" we love them and wish them the very best.
we will not be here,...only the opening sunday of work camp.
Don't worry about not being able to speak French while in Paris. When we went there, we found virtually everyone willing to at least try to communicate with us uni-lingual Americans. Paris is a big, metropolitan city. And the majority of places you will go will likely be tourist attractions (The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumphe, the Louvre, your hotel, etc.) where workers are accustomed to American visitors and quite fluent in English. In more rural parts of France, however, it's another story. Be sure to check out the open-air flea markets along the Seine river banks. It's a great place to buy old junk (like art prints, tableware, jewelry, etc.) that's cool simply because it's old, FRENCH junk. We have some tortoise-shell handled serving utensils that always remind me of our trip there.
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