Confidence is Key, Or Now the French Call Me Murphy

I've been using the Rosetta Stone computer program to learn French and I like it. It shows you pictures and words, you repeat the words aloud and the computer even corrects your pronunciation. You also are 'graded' on typing the words using the correct spelling and any accent marks, so it's in depth and has really helped here. I'm finding that because of my background in Spanish, I'm able to read some French so that's helping.

My mother used to say "Pride comes before a fall" whenever we'd act overly confident or arrogant. Let me tell you, hearing your mother's voice echo in your head after you've done something stupid is possibly one of the most annoying things on the planet. (Love you, Mom.)

I walk into the grocery store, feeling more at ease with shopping. This 'winning attitude' comes from a combination of pure avoidance (if it doesn't have a picture and I don't recognize the words, I just move on) and a limited but growing collection of food related words. This has actually been working for me, except for the directions on packaged food and some mysterious looking meat pack that Brian chose, but that's what Google translate is for!

Brian needed some lotion for his foot and I confidently said that I could pick it up for him one afternoon. The body section is a little overwhelming, but I found some pump style bottles that helped clue me into the right category. I chose a bottle that said 'hydrate' and was 'lait' scented, which I understand means milk.

When I got back to the apartment, I decided I wanted to try it. I pumped some into my hands and it had a weird clear bubbly look. I'm pretty skeptical at this point, but rub it on my leg, where it turns a white color before I spread it out. It had a lotion-y feel to it, so I thought, 'what the hell,' and kept using it.

At the team dinner that night, I tell A, our American lady friend, about how weird French lotion was. S was listening and said, "that's not what our lotion looks like. That's not what anyone's lotion looks like. What did you buy?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I bought hair gel. I bought hair gel and rubbed it all over my body.

For now, I only grocery shop with one of the French guys, who double checks my purchases.

Good God, I hope we don't get sent to Singapore.