Happy New Years everybody! (part 1)

And err... you may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. I took a break. Sorry.

You may be wondering what I did during that break. Well. You're still going to have to wonder. A little. In any case, a play by play recount of the last three weeks isn't going to interest anyone. So instead I am going to regale you with insightful observations that I have learned during my travels. Well, that's the plan anyways. First, here are some photos of my break to make you feel jealous and curious:

Ha ha! Wonder away... although, if you guessed "Alps", you've done a very good job.

Now, prepare to be regaled by my observations.

Mayenne is not like the rest of France.
And for that, I am grateful.

When I tell someone in France where I live, they say one of two things, they usually try and correct my grammar, and then they ask me one of two questions:
1) Where is that ?
2) Why?
The reason they try and correct my grammar is because the town of Mayenne is located in the department (a department is a little bit like a county) of Mayenne. In French, when you say "I live in Mayenne" the preposition (in) changes depending whether you are talking about a town or a region (à versus en). So when I say "J'habite à Mayenne" they think that I have made a mistake because I am foreign and because they do not even know there is a town called Mayenne.

I think the best way to describe Mayenne is to say that it is the French equivalent of rural midwestern town in the US. The problem with this statement is that I am not sure I can legitimately claim to have ever been to a small midwestern town, so I'm really just making everything up. In any case what I mean by this statement is that when I meet people in Mayenne, they seem to be a little surprised that I have an accent. When I say I am from the US, they are even more surprised. They tend to be very locally minded and farm minded. And they all speak French all the time. I have never had anyone try and speak English to me. I have some to realize that I appreciate this remoteness.

In Chamonix, I often found myself confused because I would go to speak French, the way I always do and it would turn out that the waiter was actually English and would really prefer it if I spoke in that language. I would prepare something to say in my head only to find out I was speaking the wrong language.

Eventually, I found myself getting irritated with the tourists and the waitstaff who were speaking the wrong language and found myself wondering why everyone couldn't just speak French. I think I have been in the provinces too long. I'm starting to sound a little bit country-bumpkin-ish. I realized that in most cases the tourists can't help it, but I still got all grumbly. If I don't get out here soon, I'm going to start complaining about how frosts this time of year are no good for growing zucchini in the fall or some such other local wisdom.

Alrighty. I'm tired, you're going to have to wait for further observations until tomorrow night.