The Truth May Come Out...

Miscommunication #16 of the Day

Characters:
HEATHER- the only American in the room and who only understands about 98 percent of French conversation directed at her; has been in France for 21 days
CORALIE- a great 17 year old who is kind, helpful and patient with the language barrier

Setting:
A high school church youth group meeting. Everyone is sitting on chairs in a circle. Each person is describing what happened this summer for their partner. HEATHER is trying to internally practice her prepared sentence about CORALIE's summer. She hears the French word for Canada and tries to smile as if it is great that the twins apparently visited Canada this summer.

(CORALIE leans over to HEATHER)
C: Did you understand that?
(H shakes her head)
C: He said that they saw a beer in Canada.
(The room has become silent except for H's translator and everyone looks at H to see her reaction.)
H: A beer? In Canada?
C: Yes!
H: That's it?
(H refuses to be impressed. Further conversation continues in the group while H processes the information)
H: Oh, a bear! A bear in Canada! Ah!
(H uses hand motions to describe what she thought Coralie meant...)

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Visited the world's largest paragliding festival, Coupe Icare, yesterday and greatly enjoyed watching the take-offs and acrobatics while my face got sunburned.

*If you want to get on my bad side, tell the person in the middle of a conversation with me to stop speaking English.

**Also, so the truth comes out, I am in fact an emotional person. I think the only people who really know that are my parents, especially Mom, Ree Enlow and HOPE staff. Tricia probaly knows too. Luis saw me breakdown once. If people here don't stop stopping communication with me in a language I understand, there are going to be a lot of Frenchmen who learn that I'm emotional too.