Je viens pour le lapin

So, when your (slash my) French is bad, I find that it is helpful to have a first phrase planned for any encounter. "Je viens pour le lapin" ("I come for the rabbit") was my opener when I went to pick up an origami rabbit necklace I ordered at the I-Lick-Your-Windows-All-Of-August shop I mentioned in my last post. It worked! Origami is significant because I am, er, attentive to detail, and love paper. The bunny is significant because it is my totem animal (discovered in response to EH's insightful question). I chose cette animal because I consider rabbits both cute and ferocious, and like that they were previously considered rodents. The overall encounter also was significant, because it was the first time I ordered something here, it involved a number of phone calls, etc. Picking up the necklace also capped off a day I had done a number of things I was afraid of including getting a manicure and scheduling an appointment for a pedicure (or rather, a "beauté de pieds", because only a licensed podiatrist can give a "pedicure," bien sûr). I wore the rabbit tonight to my placement test for the French course at the Mairie, but it didn't help me with the future tense.

There have been a number of everyday accomplishments here, from the big-ish establishing bank accounts, apartment insurance, and applying for immigration long-stay carte de sejour, to minutiae such as figuring out where to get a sticky lint brush (Monoprix, for one), and what it is called (brosse adhésive). I tend not to blog or otherwise take note of such things, but really, these types of things are most of what I "do" here, and I can feel elated by these successes.

The daily difficulty is not a matter of pure "translation." At times, there is no exact parallel. People more sophisticated than I am may already know that the French have completely different cuts of boeuf. And tools like Google Translate can be far from perfect. E.g., it translated my message that my former apartment was in overall "terrific" condition to say that it was in overall "terrible" condition. I actually sent that to my landlord. (GT's also not great with food terms, though it's true that the actual translation of "volaille" just isn't specific enough for my taste).

Living here is the intellectual and emotional equivalent to how I felt when I took Pilates and hurt in muscles I didn't know existed. One is in shape in one's home culture in ways that are invisible, and there are so many cultural differences waiting to be discovered. Just as Rosetta Stone is meant to mimic language acquisition from the age of bébé, my daily life is an attempt to basically become a human from the perspective of a total ALF.

But my coping mechanism does help. My opener at the video store across the street? "Je suis cinephile." The guys behind the desk exclaimed happily, "C'est bon!" and opened an account for me.