lonely in a crowded room

You’re in a room stuffed with people from wall to wall. You hardly know anybody; what’s more what you speak of their language is confounded by the loud music and everyone talking at once. The two glasses of champagne you’ve had so far haven’t helped either. As you happen to be an introvert, you keep looking for reasons to go upstairs, where it is quiet. And yet, you reflect, even though everyone is singing, you’re probably the only one there who knows and understands the words to the larger half of the songs they’re playing
Until they start playing all the French songs and you realize you can’t even fake it; you’ve never heard these songs before. And you realize your awkwardness, the tension you feel when anyone approaches you speaking English or asking about the United States or its attitudes on XYZ—it’s partially your fault. You’re at least as arrogant about your own culture as any one around you is of theirs.
Resolved:
- LEARN FRENCH
Get over persecution complex
Spend minimum time alone in safe little English bubble and talk to people
Only approaching things that are hard have never been easy for me. Y’all know how I get when I try to start a paper. Or maybe you’ve seen me climb the ladder to the high dive and have to climb back down five times before I get the courage to jump. Or there’s the time I had to stick my finger in Anatomy lab so I could test my blood and it took me a good five minutes to get up the guts to do it, even though the instant I pushed the trigger on the needle I’m thinking, wow, this isn’t so bad. I guess it’s time to pull that trigger.
Otherwise the party was lovely. Everyone was beautiful. I learned about Rock and Roll dancing ("Of course you know rock and roll dancing, it’s American, right?" More like a European answer to jitterbug), ate exquisite chocolate mousse and candied fruit with almond paste and little toothpicks with what looked like tiny diced potatoes but which were actually tiny scallops. We danced until five in the morning, by which time we had moved on to m&ms and apperatif crackers and all the French songs everyone knew by heart and could belt out lustily… I was more at ease by then. The party was a great success. I’ll echo L.E. "It was great." "Why?" "Because it was hard."
We slept until noon, ate breakfast, then lunch, wondered over train and mass schedules for awhile and finally figured I should stay the night and go to mass with them. We went to a tiny hospital chapel, me, T. and H., her sister. It was more like a school room at times; people would raise their hands and ask the priest questions in the middle of his announcements. I understood almost all of it. Party. Bonus. Went to housewarming not exactly party but crèpe gathering with one of the dancingest couples at the party last night. Apparently they know salsa and this rock and roll, and she does ballet and modern jazz, but swing is still a mystery.
And darling…you’ll be comforted to know that while H. has no great love for peanut butter itself, she concedes that peanut butter M&Ms are delicious.

Left the R.s’ to their preparations to leave for the Grandparents’ in the country and Guadeloupe. T. unfortunately, has a month left of work. She’s working (for my cell phone company in fact) on a temporary basis and hasn’t had any vacation for 14 months, except maybe a little off for Christmas. Exhausting for everyone, but imagine for someone who’s used to a week vacation every 7 weeks of school. One more month to go and she’s free to make wedding preparations.
Woke up from my twenty minute nap yesterday that lasted an hour and a half from a dream that I was in this elementary boarding school with all French kids and no one wanted to pick me to work with them on projects because I didn’t speak French well enough. Woke up determined to socialize. Kept hearing clanking and thuds and grunting and crashing coming from next door. Sounded like someone trying to put a very heavy box of dishes on a very high shelf. Thought I’d be neighborly and go over to help. But he was just lifting weights.
Still exhausted, hiding in the English bubble. Resolved: review resolutions.