"And in this moment, I am happy...
I wish you were here."
~Incubus, Wish You Were Here

Tonight I went to see "L’Ami Alleman" with some friends... "The Good German," in English. I went with four French people and a Canadian. This is the movie I said would never go over well here because no one would want to see a movie about "good" Germans. I was wrong, because the whole premise of the movie is that there are NO good Germans. Actually, the tragic main character is Cate Blanchett, who plays this villified German Jew married to an SS officer. I think she is supposed to be ironically the good German, BUT she sends twelve of her Jewish friends to the camps, then becomes a prostitute, which, in combination, save her from being sent to the camps.
It may take the cake as the worst movie I have ever seen, ever.
I like George Clooney, but he got the bejeebees kicked out of him in this, and after the first fifteen minutes, I found myself glad, because anyone who makes a movie that BAD probably needs some sense kicked into them. It’s in black and white, with cheesy old music and lots of scenes straight out of other movies– Casablanca, Pearl Harbor, etc. No plot, really, just a lot of German names that I couldn’t keep straight, AND it was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who I feel like used to direct really lame teen movies or something, but I can’t remember.
BUT now that I have seen it and am qualified to make a statement about it: I was wrong, the French will eat this up because, as we all now know, there is no such thing as a Good German. According to the movie, and this is a quote: "They should probably all be hung, because every last one of them knew what Hitler was doing and no one lifted a finger to stop it."
I’m not saying it’s true. But according to the movie, and probably French people, it is. So there you go. But save your $8, and DO NOT go see it... because not only is it bad, it’s just BORING. Nothing happens, and then it ends, and not like one of those foreign films where you are left to tie up the loose ends in your head, but just... it ends, and you don’t know HOW or WHY or WHEN or WHO... Lame.
In other news, one of the French guys at the movie asked me if I was from New Zealand (because approximately 98% of the English-speaking population of my church is from NZ or Australia). I answered, in French, "No, I am american." In French, like in English, this takes four words to say, and thus should not be that complicated, especially since I have to say "americaine" all the time.
So I say, "Non, je suis americaine," and the other French girl standing there goes "amehhhhricaine," making fun of the way I said it, and then snickered. I don’t mind when people correct me, and I love it when they help me out with expressions I don’t understand, whatever... but these people KNEW I didn’t speak French well (I don’t front about it like I’m fluent or something) and it wasn’t like a teasing ‘let me help the poor american’ kind of thing, it was just mean. Especially because she had asked me something in English earlier in the evening that didn’t make sense at all– her English accent is as bad as my French one, and she actually speaks WORSE English than I do French, and still she has the nerve to make fun of me to my face? I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t, at that point, been the only non-French person in the group (the Canadian had not arrived yet), and I had only met two of them before, and all the French guys are standing there listening to me, and I realize that I probably make a fool of myself with my childish phrases and Valley Girl accent every time I say anything, but at least you could be nice about it?
But on the bright side, she’s the only person that has ever been outright rude to me about my french, and when I mentioned it to my Swedish friend (who is fluent in French), she said the girl is always mean like that to everyone.
At least I’m still trying...

I’m going to try to stop babbling about California, because it’s so far in the future that I might as well quit thinking about it, though I am so excited, you have no idea how little sense that makes. (Every time the subject comes up, I gush. Maybe I am prone to gushing anyway, being that I am sort of an overdramatic girly girl that never really outgrew the chick flick stage, but I’ve never noticed it about myself except with regard to this particular job. I mean, literally– I hung up with the guy from LA in my phone booth, danced IN THE PHONE BOOTH like a crazy person [who dances in phone booths except for the mentally ill?] then picked the phone back up and called my grandmother, who probably couldn’t understand anything I said because it sounded less like a coherent human voice and more like "OMIGOSHYOUWILLNEVERBELIEVEWHATJUSTHAPPENEDTHEGUYGAVEMETHE
JOBIAMGOINGTOCALIFORNIAHEDIDN’TWANTTOINTERVIEWMEHEJUSTWANTED
TOGIVEMETHEJOBANDNOWIAMGOINGTOCALIFORNIAIMEANNOTRIGHTNOWBUT
ATTHEENDOFTHESEMESTERFORTHEWHOLESUMMERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
CANYOUBELIEVEITBECAUSEICAN’TIAMTOTALLYSTILLINSHOCK!" That is a direct transcription of the whole conversation. Anyway, the point of all that is to say that I danced in an all-glass phone booth on the Boulevard Sebastopol, one of the main streets in Central Paris. Alone. I think I still had the phone in my hand, waving it over my head, which makes the whole thing even less charming and more just... awkward.)
So after this, no more California, except for updates when something new happens.
BUT I read this book during the beginning of my freshman year of college by John Eldredge, who is usually theologically shaky but interesting reading nonetheless, and filled with good quotes by people who are not theologically challenged. And when you put down one of his books, you always feel better than when you picked it up. But this particular one had an introduction that I actually read (I never read introductions, this was a major step for me), and I don’t remember anything about it except that the last paragraph talked about how miserable our daily existence is (the premise of the book was to teach the reader how to improve that miserableness or something, I don’t know.), and the last sentence said "Imagine that you somehow found out that this, the way you live now, your obligations, job, responsibilities, routine, your daily life right now was going to be the same for the rest of your life. It would never get worse, but it would never get better either. Think about this, and you will realize something important. It is hell."
Ok, that’s like three sentences, but still. The point is, I got through the introduction, read that sentence, and thought to myself, "but he’s wrong!" Because if I could have frozen that period of time forever and just lived like that, it would have been perfect. So I put the book down and thought "Well, eventually I’ll be mature enough to understand that, and then I’ll read it for real."
The summer after freshman year came and was somehow even better than freshman year. Then was sophomore year, which, even with a broken arm and a lot of roaches marring the semesters, will still go down in history as amazing. Last summer came, and begged to be extended for so much longer than it could be... Living in Paris finally happened, and was so amazing I chose to stay an EXTRA semester. And now I am going to LA, to do what I’ve always wanted to do, ever since I was old enough to have a legitimate career plan that didn’t involve being in the circus (which is the first thing I remember ever wanting to do with my life).
I never read past the intro of poor John Eldredge’s book, because with a hook like that, I figured there could be nothing in it for me.
I guess we’ll never know if I was right, because I still don’t plan on reading it anytime soon. Though I think he lives in California, so maybe his people can get in touch with my people (because that’s how they roll in Cali, I think) and we can do lunch to discuss it. In English.
~The non-fluent B