There are more words than what's in Webster's

After the museum the other day, we hit a little cafe in Paris. Nothing fancy, just something we could afford near the museum. While sitting there nearly every person that came in ordered in English (tourists). It was irritating to me. Can I soap box for a second?

Note to all who travel... TRY! Learn a couple words and try to speak the language of whatever place/people you go to visit. It really bugged me in East Africa when westerners came in and expected everyone to know their language and culture. I remember getting really mad when we were on vacation at Victoria Falls. One English guy was at the front counter of our hotel paying a bill of some sort. The hotel employee gave him his bill in Kwatcha, the currency of Zambia. The customer then demanded to know the price in British Pounds, essentially writing off the number he’d just been handed as useless. The employee tried to explain that the local currency is the, ‘ahem’, local currency, and that’s pretty much all he knew. For about ten minutes this guy yelled and cursed and demanded to see a manger because he wanted to know the price in British Pounds. Seriously? Are they supposed to know the daily rates of every currency in the world? He kept at it until someone walked over to the hotel’s courtesy computer and looked up exchange rates on the internet and then went back and made the calculation.

Here, we try as hard as we can, and most times we repeat ourselves because we’re not understood. I know the French are sort of obsessive about their language and accept nothing less than perfection, but it also breaks down a huge wall when you simply try! I also know that we have a luxury that most people don’t have, which is language school. We get to study this language in country until we master it. We did the same with Swahili. But not with chi’Nyanja, or kiLuguru, or KiHehe, or Arabic. After a week in Zambia we could greet a passerby and ask about their day, wow did that produce smiles and open hearts and homes! Same thing on our honeymoon in Mexico.

Living in Europe now we’re closer than ever before to a multitude of languages and cultures. Every planed trip we make across a language barrier will start with a simple learning of a few words and phrases, and that learning will continue throughout our visit.

Travelers, I implore you to put it on yourself to learn about the language and culture of the places and peoples you are visiting. It will make your trip better, and you may make some friends along the way.

And put it on yourself to do this at home too. Want to learn how to make friends and influence the lives of foreign nationals living around you? Start with a new language hello and a learner’s attitude toward their culture. You just might discover a world and passion you never knew existed. And you may very well see lives changed along the way.

Musee D'Orsay

Today found us back in Paris visiting the Musee D'Orsay. Musee D'Orsay is a museum that is slightly less famous than the big brother Le Louvre across the river, but also slightly less ancient, much easier to navigate, and perhaps even a bit more fun.


The museum itself is an old train station which was almost torn down till someone came up with the idea to plop a bunch of art in it. A good idea, I feel. The station gives it a very open, light feel, and was much easier for our simple square American minds to get around. Plus it was pretty in there. We sat down to take it all in when we first arrived, and here Sawyer is dictating the plan of how we will attack this museum. Down the right is the conservative art, basically just lots of pasty white naked people in paintings and sculptures. On the left side is the radical stuff that fought against the noble french art scene of some century a long time ago. There you can find paintings of people who aren't naked (like the one below), paintings that don't even have people in them, and paintings with some naked people and some not (which I'm told was shocking at the time and considered disgusting, but went to show everyone that their total blatant acceptance of nude paintings was in fact, a little weird).
We enjoyed this museum. There were a lot of impressionist (?) paintings, which I think are the ones that you stand real close to and they look sort of like a jumbled mess of dots and brushstrokes, but from a distance they are really pretty. Not like Magic-Eyes or anything (do kids today even know what those are?), just like paintings that to me seem like they would have been tough to paint up close and get pretty from far. Unless maybe they used really long brush handles. Also in this museum were lots of realism paintings. Unlike the old paintings in the Louvre which always idealized everything and made it real perfect and god-like, these paintings showed life as it is... or was. "The Gleaners" is a famous painting we saw and a prime example as it shows three ladies of the working class in a field gleaning what leftovers they could after the field had been harvested. Look it up. Turns out that beauty can exist in the ugliness of real life.

On our way home, we took a different train than usual to sit back and enjoy the scenery. Here's Sawyer waving at all the new sights. Or at Mommy. One of the two.

And last but not least, this is my blog so I will do with it what I want...

Two Boys in the Women's Bathroom

There we were. We'd just finished lunch on the 5th floor cafeteria of a Paris commercial building, and Sawyer was wet. Les toillettes were located, past the line of women waiting to enter their side we stepped into the men's room to find a muddy/watery floor, a selection of urinals, and no changing table or counter-space. We thought better of that idea and instead sat down on a landing in the stairwell to do the diaper-change. Pants down (his) and onesie undone, we were prepping the new equipment when voices rang out from above. "Monsieur, Monsieur!" came the cry of a chorus of older ladies on the landing above us, 'there's a table up here for you to use' they explained.

Didn't these women know who we were? We don't need a table to change a diaper. This very duo has completed successful changes on the floor of the Louvre at the foot of famous ancient sculptures, on the grasslands of East Africa with an SUV running on one side and elephants trumpeting on the other, and on a rocking boat in Kentucky's largest lake. A table? Pweeeaasse. But the ladies were quite insistent. Either they were disgusted by our actions, afraid we may be appalled at the lack of the hospitality of the French, or something else, but they said we must come up the stairs. So I picked up mid-diaper-change-Sawyer and we shuffled up the stairs. "Where is the table?" I asked in my best French, and they pointed past the line of ladies awaiting entrance to the 8-stall ladies' room. How do I know it's an 8-stall ladies room, you ask? Well let me tell you...

As I was saying, they pointed past the ladies, and there sat a worker for the building who was cleaning floors (or rather taking a break of some sort), who also pointed to the front of the line at the door to the women's restroom. I followed the points and the ladies, women, and girls parted like the red sea (a very narrow tightly-confined red sea) to let me through. Sawyer launched into flirt mode of course, and grinned his way to a nice little crowd of females. Before I knew what had happened, we'd found ourselves at a changing table in the middle of the ladies' room totally surrounded by women... exiting and entering stalls, washing their hands, or just oodling over the cute little boy who wanted to smile at all the gals (and thankfully didn't pee on me this time).

Not where I'd intended or wanted to go, but it gave me a good laugh as I walked back to the cafeteria. Sawyer came away with a bunch of new lady-friends, feeling quite proud I do believe.


**On a totally unrelated note: does ANYONE know where I can get a water bottle in Paris? In France? Just a simple water bottle, that's all I want. You know, the kind you fill up with water, then drink, then repeat. When we left the States I accidentally packed up all of my bottles with my camping gear that's being shipped here to be received sometime next winter. Therefore, I've been looking to buy a water bottle since I realized this mistake our second day here. I don't want to keep buying tons of little "l'eau de minéral" bottles when there's perfectly good water that comes from our tap. I've checked every hypermarché, supermarché, mall, and commercial center I can find, and nothing. Come on France... be green and sell water bottles that can be reused!

A Day at the Park

Today when we finished our day in school, it was almost 50 degrees outside and the sun was shining! Add to that the fact that Sawyer began walking this weekend, there was really only one thing we could do... go to the park.

I discovered that the park has a lot of benefits for me as well! A little Vitamin D goes a long way toward health and happiness (it's soooo good to see the sun again). Walking in circles outside keeps me out of a chair, which is good all the way around. Listening to 4 and 5 year old french children play and talk to one another gives me a healthy level of french to listen to. I can understand about half of what they say Does understanding half of what a 4-year old says make me 2-years old in my new language? If so, I'll take it. 2 years in 2 months isn't bad. Last, the park is a great place to meet adults. Although I did notice that there were a handful of American dads (other language school students who live near us) and then a bunch of French moms. Perhaps married women isn't the demographic I should be going for in new friends... Still, "how old is your son/daughter?" is just about the easiest and most welcomed opening question I've found to meet people here. And of course it's a lot of fun to go to the park, right?