To the French woman, with love.

So I work with this French woman, and one time in the kitchen, while we were both getting coffee we parléd a little Français. Or for my part, I made a terrible attempt at it. The thing is, I was already scared of this woman because she’s that strong and silent type that gives NOTHING away about what she thinks about you, and I personally am way too insecure for that sort of nonsense. So anyway, I’m nervous and as a result my French was pretty bad. To cover for myself, I try to say “I don’t speak French as well as I would like these days” but instead I said something like “I speak not as soon as French as I would like recently.” The thing is, my French is actually good enough where I cringe as the words come out because I know they are wrong. Instead of correcting myself though, I stare at her, and instead of asking me to repeat myself, or joking with me that ‘hey wow your French IS bad!” she smiles politely and walks out of the kitchen leaving me mortified and beginning several months now wherein I feel like I need to avoid her because of my shame.

We were both walking from the parking lot together this morning, for example, and I sent imaginary text messages as I walked 30 feet behind her until we got to the building and she let me in with her key.

Anyway.

I guess I just hope that one day, she reads my blog for some crazy reason because this is for her: “Je ne parle pas Français aussi bien que je voudrais.”