Monday, November 14, 2011

She's Not Foreign.

While riding the train back to Athus, two girls standing next to me were attempting to prank phone call people. "Attempting," because they were doing a rather terrible job of it. Regardless, I found the situation amusing. At one point, one of the girls received a text message. I assume it was written in English, because she read aloud with choppy pronunciation, "Do you speak French?"
She asked her friend how to say "tu es" in English. This is the moment where I stepped in with, "You are." My unexpected response initiated a brief French conversation that resulted in me successfully convincing both of the girls that I'm a native, French speaking Belgian who learned English as a second language in school. Highlight of my week.

Although I'm the only person who thinks this, I've been doing quite well on my tests. Under normal circumstances, I would enter an intense period of depression if I received a 1.5/20 on a test. But considering all I had to do to earn that point and a half was draw a picture of Jesus in Mexico, I'm quite proud of myself.
Now, this isn't to say I completely blow of every test that's handed to me-- I only do that with math tests. Usually, I do provide a lazy attempt at answering the questions. The relative amount of effort I put forth for my chemistry test, for example, earned me 4 points and a high-energy praise from the teacher.
The only teacher who refuses to praise my low (though existent) grades is my physics teacher. After getting a single question right on a test, her only comment towards me was, "You get to choose three exams to take, correct? Please don't take mine." Oh yes, I'm feeling the love.

Since my arrival in Belgium, I've been craving American Chinese food. This statement has no story behind it. It's simply a statement of sad truth.

2 comments:

  1. "You are" cracking me up. "You are" facing each challenge with a sunny outlook. "You are" creating memories to last a lifetime. And, about now "you are" wondering who I am...
    You may remember me as Miss Winn's sister, or one of your mom's customers, or perhaps the lady who had the foot surgery...
    Your mom told me about your blog months ago and I've been reading but not commenting until now.
    "You are" going to go far, Cayenne. Keep up the positive spirit and the lively blogging. I'll keep sending good wishes your way! --Sheila

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  2. Spitting Ginger I think many people miss American Chinese Food, I'm in a Central Asian Country near China and many Chinese food places have real Chiense working but the food is still no like back home. Even one owned and operated they only serve some sort of soup like thing that you put random FROZEN things in as the soup/stock stuff is heating in a giant pan in the middle of your table on a hot plate. I really miss my place back in my town that is run by a family of Chinese immigrates but they make great stuff, I really miss General Tsao's Chicken

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