Crotte de bique!

It's been a couple of days now with my French family, and wow you realize how little you understand when someone tries to tell you exactly how a woman on the bus in the morning dislocated her shoulder because the bus driver was crazy, or trying to figure out your cell phone plan, or watching a French comedy show, or just when someone asks a question and you have no idea what they said.  I will say it is amazing however, how you can learn vocabulary so quickly when they point to something or explain something and ask you what is a géométre, seau, nem, vitre, bougie, cornichon...etc or how do you say...débarraser la table, remuer, arroser, débrouille-toi...in English?  

What's wierd is that sometimes on the spot I completely forget, I obviously know that I know the word but it is all scrambled up in my head; yesterday I completely forgot how to say surveyor, roundabout, and roommate when they asked me for the translation.  Sometimes the way the thoughts are constructed are different from English.  Today my host lady told me in French ' il faut que tu me fasses penser de ça' which would translate into English as 'don't let me forget about that' but it literally means "it's necessary that you make me think about that" different eh?  

I also had the opportunity today to open the minds of my French family to...peanut butter!  Yes!  They asked me if I had brought some, because I had been talking about Smuckers the only real type of peanut butter other than freshly ground, so much.  I said of course I did, would you like to try some?  They were a little hesitant at first but very professional during our taste test, I told them it was best on bread or apples so we cut up some apples.  They started getting anxious when they watched me stir the oil in for about 2 minutes.  They were surprised that it was salty, which I think is due to the overload of Skippy in France!  Sadly it wasn't love a first taste but they didn't hate it, score!

This morning I went to the pharmacy to get some throat meds that my host lady told me to get.  What is funny to me is that I'm in a slump right now, I'm not trying to cover up my accent,  I'm getting downright lazy.  When I asked for hectaspray and lidocaine everyone in the store turned their heads and the man at the cash register decided he needed to show me how to make change for a bill in order to help the obvious foreigner when in reality I was taking a second to look for another 20 cent coin, curses to my accent.  My host family says that sometimes when I try to hide my Americain accent I end up sounding German, weird, but they say that it's better than my straight up American accent ( zhay sweez com-plet-mond dak-cord avek voos) {je suis complètement d'accord avec vous}