I am that person in my French class, that annoying person who sits forward in her chair and mouths the answers to herself while other people are responding and has comments about everything. I bother even myself.
I'm going to have to tone that down next week, especially as it becomes clear that I cannot read French out loud. I know what the words are and what they mean, but the words on the paper and the words as spoken are completely different in my head. It's like I'm learning two languages at once.
And it's one thing to be a gunner, as we call those over-eager people in law school, and it's another to be a gunner who gets everything wrong.
Our French teacher spoke today about the disdain the French and the Belgians feel for one another, and I have a story to tell about Belgian snobbery.
SN Brussels, the Belgian airline, is run like a colonial airline. The attitude of the flight attendants seems to be that they really only allow non-Belgians on the planes because, unfortunately, they have to make money, and they really only allow Africans on the planes because, unfortunately, the rest of the world would scorn them if they were quite that discriminatory. But you can see, in the way they look at their customers, that they WISH they could be that discriminatory.
I am not a fan.
Since the flight attendants on my SN Brussels flight to Dakar and then Monrovia three years ago would not allow me to sit in the entirely empty row of seats I found, I was forced to wander the plane. I can't sit still all hemmed in for eight hours. It is just not possible. So I was wandering the plane, and I happened to be standing just next to the bathroom when a very handsome young Senegalese man came out smelling strongly of smoke.
Somehow, I thought that there would be loud alarms if one smoked in a restroom on a plane, but apparently not. There was no alarm. The very handsome young Senegalese man looked at me, smiled, winked, and put his finger to his lips for silence, and I smiled and nodded.
A few minutes later, a flight attendant came by and smelled the smoke and began to investigate. "Someone has been smoking in the lavatory," he said, "It is very forbidden. You have been standing here for quite some time," he said to me, aggravated. "Did you see who was smoking? It is illegal."
This was the same guy who had banned me from the entirely empty row of seats. I looked at him and shrugged.
Yeah, that guy ought to have been a little nicer to his customers, especially if he was going to ask them to police one another. The smoker was nicer to me than he was.
"You must have seen the person," the flight attendant insisted. "Who was smoking? It is forbidden to smoke on the aircraft."
"There have been a lot of people in and out of there," I said, shrugging again at 35,000 feet, somewhere over Mauritania.
I'm going to have to tone that down next week, especially as it becomes clear that I cannot read French out loud. I know what the words are and what they mean, but the words on the paper and the words as spoken are completely different in my head. It's like I'm learning two languages at once.
And it's one thing to be a gunner, as we call those over-eager people in law school, and it's another to be a gunner who gets everything wrong.
Our French teacher spoke today about the disdain the French and the Belgians feel for one another, and I have a story to tell about Belgian snobbery.
SN Brussels, the Belgian airline, is run like a colonial airline. The attitude of the flight attendants seems to be that they really only allow non-Belgians on the planes because, unfortunately, they have to make money, and they really only allow Africans on the planes because, unfortunately, the rest of the world would scorn them if they were quite that discriminatory. But you can see, in the way they look at their customers, that they WISH they could be that discriminatory.
I am not a fan.
Since the flight attendants on my SN Brussels flight to Dakar and then Monrovia three years ago would not allow me to sit in the entirely empty row of seats I found, I was forced to wander the plane. I can't sit still all hemmed in for eight hours. It is just not possible. So I was wandering the plane, and I happened to be standing just next to the bathroom when a very handsome young Senegalese man came out smelling strongly of smoke.
Somehow, I thought that there would be loud alarms if one smoked in a restroom on a plane, but apparently not. There was no alarm. The very handsome young Senegalese man looked at me, smiled, winked, and put his finger to his lips for silence, and I smiled and nodded.
A few minutes later, a flight attendant came by and smelled the smoke and began to investigate. "Someone has been smoking in the lavatory," he said, "It is very forbidden. You have been standing here for quite some time," he said to me, aggravated. "Did you see who was smoking? It is illegal."
This was the same guy who had banned me from the entirely empty row of seats. I looked at him and shrugged.
Yeah, that guy ought to have been a little nicer to his customers, especially if he was going to ask them to police one another. The smoker was nicer to me than he was.
"You must have seen the person," the flight attendant insisted. "Who was smoking? It is forbidden to smoke on the aircraft."
"There have been a lot of people in and out of there," I said, shrugging again at 35,000 feet, somewhere over Mauritania.
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