The American who speaks French

December 17, 2011

Greetings again, everyone!
Not much to report on since my last post, we’ve been at sea for the past few days—we even cancelled our stop in the Bay of Islands due to some nasty weather so we’ve pretty much had three days at sea. Yesterday was pretty rocky, too, we had swells of about 6 meters high, or so they say, so we were all feeling the effects pretty harshly. Luckily the seas are much calmer today and the weather is a nice 70 degrees or so—so working at the Rock Wall this afternoon was a nice time out in the sun soaking up some Vitamin D and enjoying the warmth.
Tonight we’ve got the first performance of our Christmas show, which the guests on this cruise are getting to see as a sneak preview, then tomorrow we will be in Sydney and we’ll say goodbye to one of our stage staff—Adrian, the Romanian. I will certainly miss that kid! But, now I have someone to go visit in Romania, should I ever be inspired to go there.
We will leave Sydney around 5pm tomorrow and set out on our 16 day Christmas cruise which will have all of us running around like crazy. I will be on duty for the middle 5 days of the cruise which will be kind of nice since it’s mostly port days, but it also means that I’m on duty on Christmas Day. Hopefully I won’t be running around like a crazy person on Christmas Day!
I’ve got all the presents that I’m giving to the Black Shirts (my team) all wrapped and ready to go to give them on Christmas. I’m hoping that tomorrow when we get to Sydney I’ll have my Under Armour and my black Converse shoes in the mail, that will be like an early Christmas for me, then I’ll have the cards and little gifts from back home to open on Christmas morning!
Otherwise, things have been going pretty smoothly around here. I am feeling a little lonely and homesick now with Christmas coming up, and I’m wishing that I had my friends and family around with me! But I know you’re all going to have a great holiday season, wherever you’re celebrating it, and I will do my best to make the proper phone calls as my schedule allows! Remember that I’ll be having Christmas a day before y’all, and New Year’s, too! But, like I said, I’ll do my best, loved ones.
I just finished watching the movie “The Help” which I had seen this summer (with Daniella!) but I downloaded it and watched it again—it’s such a good movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, definitely put it on your Netflix or go get it from a Red Box or something! One of my favorite quotes from the movie is this: “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.” Remember that, my loves, all of you.
You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
I miss you all very dearly.
B

December 18, 2011

Just a short post to tell you all a few funny stories about my day before I forget them!
So I got off the ship for about an hour or so today and walked around a market and got some lunch and then sat in a park to eat said lunch and read “Eat, Pray, Love” (which I borrowed from the ship’s library). Well, this park is right next to the harbor so you can see the water, the Opera House, and the ship of course…but that also means there are about a million seagulls flocking about (pun intended!). So I sit down with my little bag of groceries and I bust out my sandwich, and slowly these gulls start ganging up on me, staring me down, trying to get me to toss them some food. Well, I was smart enough not to succumb to their gaze and I kept shooing them away, but they were squawking and I was having flashbacks to “Finding Nemo” and the whole “Mine! Mine! Mine!” seagulls scene. Funny stuff.
Story number two is that as I was sitting on this park bench enjoying my lunch and reading my book, a family came along and sat beside me to also eat a picnic lunch and watch the world go by. I paid no attention to them and kept along with my business…and then the family started speaking French! And I said to myself “Do I have some sort of way of attracting French-speaking people, or what?!” So I sat there awhile listening to them, and due to the noise of the surroundings I couldn’t really hear much but I knew for 100% certain that they were speaking French. I kept reading and thought about talking to them, but, I didn’t honestly feel like striking up a conversation, so, I let them be but enjoyed the fact that they probably had no clue that I could understand them! After a while they moved along and went somewhere else….and they were replaced by yet another family….
Now, this family consisted of younger people, and one woman wearing a (somewhat tacky) t-shirt that was pink and white and had an Eiffel Tower on the front of it made out of little pink and green flowers. I chuckled a little at this, and presumed them to be tourists because, in my experience, French people don’t enjoy wearing clothing with the Eiffel Tower on it. However, lo and behold, after a few moments (and even after they’d been speaking English to each other) the woman in said tacky shirt began speaking French!! I won’t lie to you folks, I honestly started laughing. Now, I laughed and kept on looking at my book so that passersby would presume me to be laughing at my book, but, no, I was just laughing at the sheer improbability of TWO French-speaking families sitting down next to me on a park bench in Sydney, Australia within a span of about an hour. Now, after having neglected to speak to the first family, I was mustering up the words to introduce myself to this family, when I looked down at my watch and realized that I had to get back to the ship and didn’t really have time for a conversation. Oops! So, I lost another opportunity there, but, the whole situation was just pretty funny.
Luckily for me, I still have my new friend Bernard who works in the Explorations! Department and is a native French speaker (he’s not French, but, he lives on an island that was once owned by France near Madagascar) so I can talk to him whenever I want. I also met one of the guests from France last cruise during the backstage tour—he saw the French flag on my name badge and was pleasantly surprised. We talked for a little, I found out he lives in the Côte d’Azur and I told him I lived in Angers for a while and he seemed pleased, he asked me when I started learning French…y’know, the usual questions, but, it was really nice. It’s always the best when they say “You speak French so well! You don’t even really have an American accent when you do it!” Nice to know my hard work has paid off! And that I haven’t lost much of it!
That brings me to another thing: the conversations I have about this French flag on my name tag always open with “You speak French?” “I sure do!” “Where are you from?” “The United States” “You’re from the US and you speak French?” (always with a tone of utter surprise) “Yeah, I know, I’m a weirdo.” “No, you just don’t find many Americans who speak another language…and if they do, it’s Spanish!” “Yes, I know, like I said, I am a weirdo. But, I’m proud of it!” And then the conversation moves on from there. People, French or otherwise, really don’t think too highly of education and culture in the US…this is what I’m discovering living here on the floating United Nations of sorts. Don’t mistake me and think that I’m saying people don’t like Americans, because I find that people have no problem with us, they just don’t think we have a whole lot to offer in the culture department. And you want to disagree, then you see how our fast food chains have taken over all the major (and some minor) cities and you see people even down here in Oz wearing Steelers’ paraphernalia and it’s like “Oh…well…maybe they’re right… American football and greasy food is seemingly what we’ve given the world?” Now, please don’t bring up how we help people in wars and things, I’m not talking politics here, I’m simply rambling on about what I’ve noticed about the general American Stereotype as seen through the eyes of an American living amongst people from 65+ different countries and visiting places that are strikingly similar to the USA in some ways and vastly different in others. I think America has more to offer than people realize, but, it’s all about what people realize, am I right?
Think about it yourselves, ask yourself what you think when you think about France, Italy, England, Canada, China, Indonesia, India, Romania, *insert any other foreign country here*--and ask yourself why you think that about that country? Is it because you’ve been there so you know what that place is like? Or do you think that because that’s what you’ve heard? And if you’d heard that about a place and then went there and found it to be different, were you surprised? Or was it exactly as you thought it would be?
Anyways, before I keep going on and possibly talking myself into a very small corner, I think I will leave all of you to chew on that bone. Maybe my ramble didn’t even make sense…it probably didn’t….sorry if it doesn’t…or if it offends…or if you disagree. But, anyways there it is. I am not going to go back and re-read it to see if I make any sense, I typed it as I thought it…kind  of a stream of consciousness thing of sorts (oh no, Mrs. Dalloway! Right, Cathryn? :P) (Sorry folks, that’s a joke for Cathryn, anyone who isn’t Cathryn can ignore that last bit).
That’s all for now, have a show to do tonight and then we break in the new guy by setting up our first Production Show that will be on tomorrow night! Welcome aboard, new guy! Apparently he lives about 10 minutes from the dock which means we might all have a fun place to party when we’re here on overnights, YES! Let’s hope that that ends up being true!
Love y’all,
B