I'll be back to blogging soon. Probably in a few days. And since I'm pretty sure people in the fam are the only ones who read this, here's a little something to tide you over.
I have found that middle aged Frenchmen are weird. They are nice to us girls in the group, and what may not constitute as flirting in France by any means, it does constitute as slightly flirting by American standards. I do not think they are intentionally creepy or anything of the like; they are just simply being friendly.
Everyday I go to the little grocery store by Mr. Crêpe Man and the Institute building. The produce man at the grocery store met me once, and talked to me about where I'm from, the fact that I look Italian, and that his mother is Italian. (I recall him saying something weird about how my dad and his mother need to meet and to be friends and that he will give me his mom's phone number..) He also picked out what he said were the best apples in the bunch, and they were disgusting. So since then, I have avoided him. I have been successful until today.
Produce guy: Bonjour mademoiselle!!
me: bonjour
guy: çava?
me: oui, et vous?
guy: oui, çava, merci beaucoup!
I then walked away thinking that was the end of it. I had a lot of things in my arm as I was picking an apple, so if I dropped something, I would have to drop everything in order to see the floor where said dropped item fell. Well, moments later the man jumps up from right under my arm (where my view was obstructed), and grabs my arm and makes weird sounds and yells "cou cou!!" Which means, "hey" or "hello" in a very casual way. I jumped back and said "oh my gosh." It freaked me out and caught me off guard and completely scared me. So then the man started laughing and repeating "oh my gosh, oh my gosh, you just said oh my gosh!" And then he told his co-worker how funny my reaction was. The man then watched me purchase my food, laughing the entire time. I don't think I will go back to that grocery store as long as Produce Guy is there.
Well, that story may have been anticlimactic, but there you go fam, an example of a daily occurrence that happens in the "vie quotidienne" in Paris.
