wordless wednesday...

vocabulary lessons

I have decided to learn French.

The Mathematician and I are going to France in a few weeks, so I want to learn the language. I have become quite good at parroting the childish restaurant Spanish that Luis, Bibbiana, and Sylvia, the Columbian bussers that I work with at Toro, teach me on nights when the restaurant is slow. This has me convinced that I must be secretly "good at languages", that perhaps there is some sort of latent linguistic genius locked up inside of me, just dying to get out and start yapping unencumbered in a Latin tongue. So I have decided that it's time to bite the bullet and learn a Latin tongue. I have six weeks--we'll see if it pans out.

I took French in junior high and high school, and am hoping that even if I'm not an undiscovered linguistic savant, what I used to know will all come back to me like magic if I study really hard before our trip. So, the Mathematician and I took an Immersion for Travellers class this weekend at the BCAE with a fabulous woman named Nancy Winston (highly recommended!) and now I feel more confident in my abilities...even if the only phrase I could muster during our passe compose exercise on Sunday afternoon was:

Il a loue ses chaussures!

Literally this means "he has rented his shoes". But hey, the conjugation was right! Bon, c'est tres bien!

So, in light of my new found hobby (since between writing a book, working as a publicist, waiting tables, and freelance writing I have LOADS of time on my hands), I've been thinking a lot about words lately, and thought I'd post about the treatment of the word "blonde" in a few other languages:

En Francais, blonde is...well, blonde. Actually, now is a good time to note that "blonde" is technically the incorrect English spelling of this term. It should be "blond", sans the extra 'e' at the end, or at least that's what spellcheck thinks. I have chosen the spelling with the extra 'e' because, quite simply, it looks prettier to me than 'blond'. It is also interesting to note that the word 'blond(e)' did not appear in English until approx. 1481, and is believed to derive from the Old French term blont which meant "a colour midway between golden and light chestnut". The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was until recently still felt as French (thanks, Wikipedia.) But what did they call yellow-haired women before there was blonde?

En Italiano, blonde is bionda. I did not have to look this word up on WordReference.com to learn it. I learned in Florence, when Marissa and I went for a drink on our own one evening, sans Le Mathematician. As you may recall from this post, Italianos tend to be very friendly to women who are unaccompanied by a man. One Italiano was so enthusiastic with his friendliness, that his exuberance caused me to jump clear out of my skin with fright: "Que BIONDA, mamma mia!!!" he screamed as we passed him on the street. "Bionda means blonde," Marissa said. "See, I told you Italian men like blondes! Put that in your book!"

En Espanol, the word for blonde is rubio. In Columbian Espanol, the word is mona, which Luis was so kind to point out to me is also the word for "monkey" in his home country. "Monkey," I said, "are you sure? Blonde and monkey mean the same thing? Are you pulling my leg" Quickly I realized that some slang and colloquialisms are just impossible to explain to non-native speakers of your language, and should simply be accepted at face value, like the phrase "pulling my leg."

Blonde, bionda, monas, oh my! There you have it, mes amies, blonde in trois langues.

Now I just need to figure out how to say "undercover".

pictures to prove it

Last night, East Side Girl called me up to chat.

"Where the f*** are all the pics from your trip???" she asked. "You promised photos and all we get are some big wine glasses, and that's it???"

It was almost as though she didn't believe I had gone on the trip at all. Okay, she has a point. So, here are a few more pictures to prove it...



Me with my best friend in Siena at night...










Us again, looking mischievous...










Me with Prague Castle...


















The Mathematician in Cafe Mucha, one of a gazillion gorgeous Art Deco cafes in Prague. Seriously, it feels like time stopped in Prague in the early 20s, at least architechturally, and in the dining establishments and hotels. Everywhere you eat or drink it looks a little bit like the dining room on the Titanic...


How is that East Side Girl? There will be more to come, too...

Invisible Blonde

I’m back! First of all, I am a total delinquent in posting, and how silly of me for even thinking that I could post while away. Duh. It’s bad enough that I had to work while traveling (just an hour or so a day, but still), the last thing I felt I could make time for while hotfooting it around the continent was more sitting in front of the computer, even if it was to write, which is something I love. Instead, I detailed the nuances of my blondeness in Italy and Prague a little pink journal. How cute.

I’ve got so much to ruminate upon from the trip, but the abbreviated blanket statement I can make about how blondes fare in Italy is this:

Blondes brunettes, redheads, whatever—you are completely invisible as a woman Italian culture if you are with a man.

If you are NOT with a man, however, but walking down the street with a girlfriend, or heaven forbid, by yourself, you will be lavished with lots of attention, freakish amounts of attention, so much attention in fact that you may be left wondering if you have something on your face or if you’ve accidentally tucked your skirt into your panties and are now flashing all of Rome and the joke is on you.

I can only conjecture that this two-faced sexual harassment happens for the obvious reason that the harasser, who I will refer to as Primate A because behavior like this is truly for the animals, would never disrespect a female in the presence of her boyfriend, Primate B, for fear that Primate B would come to his sweetie’s defense and kick the living shit out of him. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that—maybe men just share an understood, mutual respect for each other that they’d never want to sacrifice, no matter how hot or blonde the woman in question. In any case, this Jekyll and Hyde behavior is something that is a given in my normal life in America as well, and was also true when I lived in Ireland, and I can only imagine that it is as universal as the human inability to subsist without water. And because of all this, our brothers, our boyfriends, and our fathers, no matter how sweet and how sensitive, will never really know what it’s like to be us.

Anyway, the only reason I bring this two-faced behavior up is because in Italy, it was so dramatically pronounced that I felt virtually invisible while I was out and about in Italia with the Mathematician. We’d walk into a coffee bar and the barista would view me with the same measured stare that he seemed to be leveling at all the customers. “Due caffe,” he’d say, with the same businesslike tone he used with the Mathematician. He never cracked a flirtatious smile, or even raised a suggestive eyebrow.

At first I felt silly—both for extending the life of my blondeness so as to be blonde in Italy, and for spending the money on re-blonding to make sure my hair was as bright as possible before I left. “Is my experiment really yielding no results? Is everything that I’d heard about Italianos being abundantly vocal in their praise of anything possessing a vagina a lie? Or perhaps Italian men are impervious to blondes, preferring the dark hair/dark-eyed/olive skinned look of southern Italian women?” Then I had a terrible thought: perhaps I’d somehow…I don’t know…lost it? Maybe I am only easy on the eyes in America?

I started to realize the gig was up somewhere during our first full day in Roma, while the Mathematician and Marissa and I were doing a little sightseeing. We traversed crowded streets, so thronged with tourists and Romans going about the business of their late-Friday afternoon that it was difficult to distinguish us as a group, traveling as three. As we walked I heard comments, whispered to me under the breath, in Italian and I could only understand a handful of words with familiar roots like bella. The minute the Mathematician would emerge from the crowd, appear by my side, or wrap his hand around mine, the comments would cease, the searching eyes of their speaker cast down towards the cobblestone street or skyward, towards the buildings over my head, or occasionally they’d simply watch us pass, innocuous and silent, perhaps relieved that the Mathematician hadn’t heard a word.

Something I did not consider before I left was how vulnerable it feels to spend two weeks in a country where you don’t speak the language. It’s exciting and exotic, for sure, but when you first arrive, after you’ve stumbled off the plane in your jetlagged stupor, been made to feel foolish by airport personnel, taxi cab drivers who charge you twice what you owe because of your American accent, and coffee bar staff who can’t understand why you don’t understand their simple, basic, Italian question about your coffee and pastry purchase, it can leave you a bit raw. For this reason, experiment, project, and book aside, at least in the beginning of the trip, I relished the silence.