Salut YouTube so today I'm gonna do a video that's much more for your viewing
pleasure than it is for mine and I'm gonna do a video about some of the times
where I've royally embarrassed myself here in France feel free to laugh at me
I'm totally fine with that I've laughed at myself a plenty of times since I've
moved here obviously as a foreigner I've done all of the classics I've said
je suis chaud for I'm hot instead of j'ai chaud and for those of you who speak
French you'll know that I was telling everyone about how excited I was feeling
you know excited excited but I think nothing can prepare you for how many
times you're gonna embarrass yourself, A) when you're speaking a new language
and B) when you move to a new country so without further ado let's get rolling
with the times where I've absolutely humiliated myself ok so my first big
embarrassment came when I started my first internship here in France and I
interned for LVMH which is Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy group. They're the French
luxury giant who own Dior, Givenchy, Guerlain, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs all of these
huge luxury brands so as you can imagine it was a super chic and quite uptight
formal environment and so I arrived there for my first day nervous as all
hell as you can imagine this little girl from New Zealand to the luxury industry
in Paris France and so I wanted to make a really really good impression so I
arrived to my first day at work and I meet the intern who I'm replacing and so I
take note of her name and for the rest of the day I'm introducing myself to
people these very chic classy people saying hi I'm Rosie I'm from New Zealand
and I'm replacing Miss Connard, hello nice to meet you
I'll be replacing Madame Connard, yes Connard and so I spend the
whole day explaining that I am replacing this Miss Connard and so at the end of
the day the person who I'm replacing has left the building gone home for the
night and I need to send her an email about something and so I double-check
with my you know gorgeously chic French manager I'm sorry just to double-check
I'm just I'm needing to email Miss Connard is this how you spell it
C-O-N-N-A-R-D and she looked at me and she was like Rosie do you know what that
means no I don't I guess it's a surname right she was like firstly that's not
her surname her surname is Collard and secondly that means A**Hole so I had been
going around on my first day introducing myself as the person who's going to
replace the asshole so that was an awesome start
The next time I embarrassed myself is much less my fault I think my boyfriend was lovely
enough to get me some beautiful leather boots for my birthday and I was
absolutely in love with them and I go to try them on and the foot fits but I
can't zip up the calf like my calf muscles seem to be too established I
guess for the zip to be able to make it up so you know oh well it's a shame
let's go shopping for some new ones and exchange them so I went to Gallerie
Lafayette here in Paris and I started picking out with the sales assistant
several different pairs of boots to try and not one of them would zip up I never
really had this problem before I mean I know that my legs are sort of shapelier
and you know in New Zealand the girls tend to have a bit more shapely athletic
kind of legs compared to the very very slim legs you
see here in France but I didn't realize that it could be an issue and so I'm
trying to get these boots up like trying to zip them up my calf muscles one by
one and the assistant you can tell they're getting quite nervous and that
they're like ooo ça va pas, ça vas pas (it's not going well) they're trying to help but there's like
not much that they can do and I kept trying to point out boots that I that I
liked the look of and they look at me like at the end of the day I found a
lovely brand from the UK with some gorgeous boots that fit me just fine but
that whole scenario was a little bit embarrassing with like the panicked
salesperson and you know how do you say to someone like I'm sorry but your legs
are just too thick for our boots here my next embarrassing story is again back
when I was an LVMH so again luxury industry and my job was helping to
organize these very prestigious kind of trainings for top executives and so
you'd invite very senior executives to a residential seminar which means a
seminar where we actually live there sleep there eat there and do the training
there and we went to some beautiful locations because obviously it's a
company that has a lot of money so we would go to castles outside of Paris and
I'd be able to be there for a week for example and it was just incredible and
so my very first trip was to one of these most beautiful castles outside of Paris
and for the after work drinks we had these nibbles out so they had
oysters and they had scallops and they had very nice things but then on the end
of the table they also had saucisson which is this dried sausage that you can
get in France and you slice it into into little slices and you know it's got
quite a lot of fat in it and everything but it's super tasty but
because I'm not really a seafood fan you know I headed straight to the saucisson
and so I was cutting up chunks of saucisson and I took some
baguette and everything and you know I went to join my manager and and her
circle of very chic guests that we had invited to this training and I was here like
mmm I love this saucisson this is one of my favorite foods in France and I
could tell that that was really not the right thing to say and afterward she did
tell me that saucisson is actually not at all classy - we all love it it's very
tasty but no one would kind of ever admit that they've really enjoyed it and
it was very tasty etc in this kind of environment so while they're with their
little toothpicks and their scallops I'm there saying how much I'm loving that
saucisson and apparently I came across as really really not classy
The next time I embarrassed myself was again at work so I don't know what my colleagues
think of me really but I was running late this morning I went down to the
Metro and it was the first of the month which means that my Metro pass had
expired and I needed to top it up I had no money on it so I couldn't get to work
so I had to join a really long queue and wait and get it topped up and everything
so I ran into work and I joined this meeting like five minutes late and
because of my accent I have a real trouble pronouncing the word queue in
French and so I was saying "je suis désolée, il y avait une énorme queue, un très très
grand queue" and I was saying that this queue I was in was really long
and that's why I was late. You're meant to say queue like 'kuew' I think even now
I still struggle and what I was saying was ass - cul
and so I was saying I'm so sorry there was a huge-ass
a really really long ass I was stuck in the ass and so they were obviously
cracking up laughing because I was telling them that I was running late to work because I had
been impeded by this giant ass. The next embarrassing moment that I want to share
was very early on into my time in France I really didn't speak a word of French
and so I was with my boyfriend and some of his friends whom I was meeting for
the very first time and I was eating an apple and we were chatting and I was
eating my Apple and I asked my boyfriend "tu veux une bite" - would you like a
bite of my apple and what I didn't realize at the time is that I was
actually asking him if he would like a cock - is it just me by the way or does
every single word in France have the potential to become a sexual
connotation? Another time I had a little bit of a problem with the French
language was when I was meeting a very very senior director in my company and
I had actually just gotten back from New Zealand and so I had bought back a range
of chocolates from New Zealand that I was distributing to colleagues and so I
had a meeting with him and my manager and I offered him a few chocolates from
New Zealand and he said you know what it's so funny I just had another New
Zealander in the office and they too bought me a block of chocolate and looked
him in the eye and I said you know we're very gourmand in New Zealand and what
I'm trying to say is we love sweet things and we very much get a lot of
pleasure from food but apparently saying I'm very gourmand or we're very gourmand
again has a very sexual connotation and I was actually saying that I have a wide
appetite but for something else so he didn't really react in the moment but
when I told my boyfriend afterwards about the story I told him you know I
was explaining to this top director that we're very gourmand in New Zealand
and he was like what did you say exactly?! And I repeated what I said and he was
like um you were basically asking him to pull his pants down in front of you!
The next little embarrassment that I've had in France was really recently actually
it just goes to show that learning French is gonna take a very long time
because I still sometimes have difficulties picking up all of the
sounds we were down in the south with my boyfriend's family and they were telling
us about their second cousin or something and his name was Jambe Noir
and for me Jambe Noir is means black leg because Jambe is leg and Noir is black
and so I was like oh my gosh this poor thing and so I asked his family how he
got the name Jambe Noir? Did he lose his leg somehow in battle? Did he have a
disease in his leg which turned it black and he had to get it amputated?
Like that poor man how did he get that name Jambe Noir? and it turns out that
his name was actually Jean-Benoit as in a hyphenated name Jean-Benoit so those are
just a few of my embarrassing stories that I have to tell but a lot more where
that came from but I hope that that gave you guys a little bit of a laugh I think
it's fun to capture these kinds of things as expat in France like there's
no way you can navigate this country or navigate this language without
humiliating yourself at least 1000 times so I hope I'm not the only one out there
tell me your funny stories down below when you've been in a new place when
you've learned a new language I'd love to read them all and until the next
video I'll say à bientôt!
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