parle en francais!

i just got finished with dinner with mme jeanson, her brother olivier, and his friend from argentina (talk about an international table!). though we all speak english perfectly well, olivier insisted we speak french.

well, crap. i can't have a conversation like that. it's like a constant test for me to speak in french. my shoulders get all tense (in fact, i just now untensed them) and i can't really say anything meaningful. i also have no confidence. i felt like the little kid at the table, especially because when the two jeansons spoke to me, they'd either speak really slowly, retarded french for me or give up and translate in english.

it's heartbreaking for me to not be able to crack a joke, or get my opinion across, or even ask a question. it makes me feel stupid and really bad about myself.

but, even when we slipped into english, i felt like a kid. i'm not grown up yet; i can't have grown up conversations yet, can i? i don't even know what the hell adults talk about, but here i am, hitting 21 in less than a month. is that when i learn how to talk about grown up things? will someone just give me a script?


the dinner wasn't as bad as i make it sound. i actually had a grand time...we talked about the drinking age, shared a couple drinking games, talked about how you NEED to speak english...tons of things. we ate for something like an hour, so you can imagine that we had lots of conversation.

oh, but the drinking thing. they pointed out that it was a very american thing to get SO drunk. i never realized that. i thought that everyone had their big drinking time, no matter where they were in the world. maybe our binge drinking is the result of that "forbidden fruit" thing.