Nice matters

Dixie Peach has been kind enough to bestow the Nice Matters Award upon me. Last week I was rather grumpy, but I think I made up for it this week by helping a friend move across town to get away from her crazy, evil landlady. (Said crazy, evil landlady has a fake rain forest in her shower, by the way. It's a little creepy, and probably rather mildewy, too.)

I would like to pass this award along to The Lone Beader, who is incredibly talented with beadwork, and to Twango, who works hard to raise awareness about healthy eating and our food supply. Be sure to check out their blogs!

Playing with pictures

I started playing around with Picasa today. Here are some of the results:







And here's the link to my Rome album from February of last year: http://picasaweb.google.com/PrincessCatsPajamas/Rome

El Rey de San Gregorio

There's a Latin American film festival going on in town right now, so I went to go see "El Rey de San Gregorio" with a friend. It's a Chilean film about two mentally handicapped adults who are in love. The film does a good job of showing the caretakers' (the man's mother and the woman's older sister) dilemma as to what to do about the relationship, since the pair are adults but incapable of being independent.

It's pretty interesting, so go see it if you get the chance.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm a little bummed out because I'm the only American I know here who hasn't gotten invited to a Thanksgiving dinner. But I'll be home for Christmas in a little over three weeks, so I'll make up for it then!

Hope y'all have a good day.

I swear I didn't do it!

Domestic cats living along the French/Swiss border have been disappearing at a surprising rate.

Meanwhile, in our German class we're learning about the accusative and the dative. So Saturday we had to talk about what gifts we're going to "give" our classmates for Christmas. I decided to give everybody a cat.

As soon as I announced this, the German teacher burst into laughter and said, "So you're the one who's stealing all the cats!"

I swear it wasn't me...

I love this commercial

You meet all kinds of people at the bus stop.

My father always said, "It takes all kinds of people to make a world," and at the bus stop, it shows!

Example 1:

A few days ago, I was standing at a bus stop with a group of three college-age girls speaking English, a middle-aged man, and an elderly woman. The woman walked up to me and said (in French): "Do you speak French?" "Yes, ma'am," I answered. "Well, good! I just saw a group of people who couldn't speak English, French or German. They weren't even speaking Spanish or Italian. I just don't understand it. It's good to meet nice young girls like you who speak French. Oh, that's my bus. Goodbye!"

Example 2:

Later on that very same day, I was sitting on the end of a bus stop bench beside a woman (hereinafter known as The Hog) who was taking up quite a lot of space by placing her grocery bags on the bench. An older woman came up to the bench, and I immediately got up to give her my spot.
"No! No, no, no. Sit back down! There's room for everyone."
"Yes, ma'am," I said, sitting back down.
"Now if we all scoot over a little bit, there will be room for everyone."
"Okay," I said, scooting as far to the edge of the bench as I could (which wasn't very far!)
"No! Not you. You don't have both your buttcheeks on the bench. Scoot back over where you were."
"Yes, ma'am."
Then she got face-to-face with The Hog.
"If we all scoot over a little bit, there will be room for everyone!" she repeated.
The Hog had enough of a sense of shame left to move her bags and scoot down to the other end of the bench. So the older woman sat down between us. After a while she turned to me and asked,
"Still got both buttcheeks on the bench?"
"Yes, ma'am!"

At least my fellow bus stop companions are concerned about the state of my language abilities and my behind.