Just when you think you’ve come to grips with your own stupidity (or perhaps ineptitude is a better word) at the French language, someone comes along and convinces you that, just maybe, there is a chance for you after all.
Probably I should be grateful for the encouragement, but since I think it will be not long until I find myself in some other uncomprehending hole dug by my own misinterpretation of the situation and/or language, I am a little loath to get my hopes up.
The class that I missed the final for was called Techniques des Arts Plastiques– it’s an art history class, but I am not going to attempt to translate the title, because the concept of "Plastic Art" has not really reached the majority of the US population yet. (Hint: it has less to do with dear Uncle Chink’s macrame and more to do with Rubens, Durer, Warhol, Vermeer, and the unknown mosaicist of "La Bataille d’Alexandre" at the Maison du Faune in Pompei.) It’s my second favorite class of college, after the first-semester frosh class for which I peaked with my synopsis of Eminem as a modern-day Elvis.
The writing has all been downhill after that.
Anyway, Techniques des Arts Plastiques was amazing, and even though I didn’t do well on the midterm, I loved the class. My TA was this gorgeous French woman who would come flying into class 10 minutes late in the most elegantly chic but simultaneously trendy European outfits with Parisian accessories; she had this fantastic red overcoat that seemed to match whatever she wore, and though she was only about 5'5", she still wore flats almost always, really cute ones with adorable fancy tights underneath. She got to teach classes at the Louvre and was the reason I discovered just how much cooler the Louvre is at 9am on a Thursday than, you know, on a Monday afternoon when the Musee d’Orsay is closed. AND while the class was taking the midterm, she sat at the front of the classroom studying for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), which made her, somehow, even cooler (though I had no idea she spoke any English at all).
Basically I wanted to be her.
So this week she sent my grade to Emory, my school in the US, and– now, get this– it is actually pretty good. I only had one grade for the class– the midterm (since I missed the final and have not done anything about it yet), but she gave me a pretty decent-for-being-in-another-language grade. AND on the comments section (I feel like the parent of a kindergarten student bragging because the teacher has written on the kid’s report card that he is good at blend ladders, only I’m bragging on myself, which somehow makes it even lamer) she wrote that "Blair speaks very good French. She is attentive and interested in the material, but her writing is weaker than her comprehension."
She said I speak good French!
The coolest Parisienne I have ever met thinks I speak good French!
In other news, this weekend I found myself contemplating buying, I kid you not, a black pair of fingerless gloves, made out of something cheaper than but vaguely resemblant of leather. I know for a fact that I would never have actually bought them– I am too clumsy to spend 20Euro on a pair of gloves– not even a pair, but half a pair since the fingers were somewhere else. Anyway, I was trying them on in Pimkie, but they were clipped together, so I had my hands kind of clenched in front of me to fit both on at the same time, looking fierce, as people who wear black fingerless faux leather gloves are wont to do, trying to examine how they look and whether I could pull off the "Yes, I am wearing these bad boys and if you mess with me I will bash your face in" look necessary to own them, in Paris or elsewhere. But the thing is that leather gloves are (who knew?) extremely difficult to put on (actually, we all knew it– it’s probably the sole reason OJ Simpson is wandering golf courses all over the US right now instead of chilling in the Pen). Anyway, I wrestled them on (even more difficult since they were clipped together), and then was standing there practicing my tough face, when my friend joined me at the mirror and said, without pausing in her search for the perfect pair of shimmery black pumps, "Oh, those totally look like you."
"Thanks," I responded, without really thinking about it, until I realized two things:
A) There is a very subtle but important difference between "Those look great on you" and "Those look like you." Usually the second implies the first, but in this case I do not think they were necessarily indicative of the same sentiment on her part.
2) I don’t actually know if it is a compliment that black fingerless leather gloves are enough my style that my best friend in Paris didn’t even flinch as she saw me flexing in front of the store mirror.
Oh, the worst part? They had knuckle holes.
If the glove fits...
Blair
P.S. Today I was grocery-shopping at Monoprix/Inno, and as I walked into the section that used to be chocolate, I noticed a butcher block-type of stand sitting in the middle of the store with some kind of metal apparatus holding an entire animal’s leg on it. The machine was clamped around the ankle of either a deer or a cow (is it bad I couldn’t tell the difference?), and the whole thing, all the way up to the thigh, was just sitting there, ready to be cut apart as people decided they wanted some. The ankle part still had the hoof (how I deduced deer or cow), but above the... knee was just raw meat. As I walked by, I heard someone blurt, "Gross, man," in a terribly Valley-Girl-or-Surfer-Boy voice, and I immediately looked around to see who it had been, until I realized... it was me. Something about living in a country where I don’t think people can understand me, and now I start talking to myself out loud in the section formerly known as candy at Inno Plaza? Further reasoning for how convinced I have become that, upon re-entry into the US, I am going to go back to the world of the peaceful and be a veggie again.