Lost In The Translation, Non!

Today, I had a meeting with another Anglophone, although she isn't American, she is Scottish. (More on this later)

We met at a lovely cafe, La Terrasse, at Ecole Militaire, which is a crossroads point in Paris (one of many). While we speak the same language (American English vs. Scottish English), we might still be from different planets.

When I left, I felt like we had not accomplished anything and I'm sure that she felt the same way. I think we both tried to finalize things for our respective goals, but between being polite (yes, I forced myself) and being strangers, we didn't come up with an action plan that would get us to the next step.

I'm not sure if she knows this or not... (She doesn't know about the blog, thank God)

So, I'll try to proceed according to what I think I agreed to do and she will proceed along the agreement that she thinks she made. Hopefully, at some point in the future, our goals will be consistent and we will be happy that we met and had such good communication skills.

OK, the "Scottish" thing -- this is really embarrassing to write, but... When we were first in Paris, in September, 2002, at the brink of the US invasion into Iraq, the US vs. French relationship was not very good. The Americans thought that the French should back the Americans simply because we helped the French during WWII. The French didn't think that the "war" was justified and didn't accept the American pressure to join forces.

To point out the obvious, Americans were not popular in France at that time.

To complicate things, my french language skills were limited to the present tense and some very common pleasantries.

One day, during the height of American/French distaste, I got into the elevator in our building on rue de Seine, with a neighbor. Remember that French elevators are so small that two people in one elevator will almost certainly have a small amount of intimate contact (at least a shoulder or hip) unless they are anorexic or are midgets.

The man, very nicely asked me in french, "Are you Scottish?"

My life flashed before my eyes! An excuse! I'm not American, I'm Scottish!!! Hurray!

So, I said, "Yes, I'm Scottish, nice to meet you" then he arrived at his floor and got off.

I'm sure that eventually word got around (small building, all French except us) that we were really Americans. Oh well.