Chocolate Log

I’ve mentioned that shout wipes are a must when packing-both in my purse and extras in my suitcase. I’m fairly clumsy to begin with. Add traveling to that which means you don’t always know when you will have a chance to wash your clothes and you get a mess-or at least I get a mess. I’m always impressed on TV shows were people get off planes and buses looking fabulous. I get off looking rumpled with as many bags under my eyes as I have checked at baggage claim.

On the flight to Italy when I studied abroad I was sitting away from the rest of the group and I was proud of myself for remaining calm with no one’s hand to squeeze for take off. I imagined I looked quite calm and relaxed. Then the food tray came around and when I popped the top off the yogurt it exploded all over me including my glasses. Just great-another 7+ hours to go in these clothes and I’m now covered in crusted strawberries.

But dried strawberries are nothing to the disaster I created on my clothing on the orchestra tour to South Africa. One night a bunch of us were hanging out in our hotel room. I was laying across one of the beds on my back, chatting for a few hours. When I got up, I found something nasty underneath me. It was chocolate. One of those little chocolate mints that nice hotels place on your pillow had become chocolate fondu under my lower back and rump. Yes, I know what it looked like. It looked like a mess. I feel sorry for the hotel cleaning staff when they found that the next day… Of course the story spread around the orchestra. Notably songs about my mess were created to the tune of “O Fortuna” which was one of the pieces we were playing. Even the orchestra conductor got in on the fun by getting someone to get me off the tour bus so he could stick a chocolate candy aptly named “chocolate log”  that he found at a rest stop on my seat.

Look before you sit.

Pictionary

My sister is currently in Paris and she just reminded me of one of my favorite things about navigating in foreign countries: their signs. We are so used to our own road signs and directional signs in buildings that it is surprising that other people have had different ideas of how to show people around. The following are some of my favorites, feel free to add your own interpretations of what these signs mean:

don’t feed the walrus

why did the penguin cross the road?

“no tromboning in the street”

don’t lean on a friend

don’t travel with giraffes

hard to see but it looks like another don’t drink and drive version

“dont play your flute into your phone”

“don’t drink and drive”

found on a wall in a school

“dig for burried treasure”

fans so strong they make men and women fly?

bathroom? that little girl has to pee I think

The old shake of the hand

I’ve never been good at figuring out the appropriate way to greet people. Usually I’m a reluctant hugger. After being laughed at by my friends for my inability to give good hugs, I was forced to learn on the orchestra trip to South Africa. This involved me having to repeatedly hug a bunch of my friends and actually squeezing them instead of my usual limp-noodle approach of just letting them embrace me while I tense up and wait for it to be over.

My French cousins have always been reluctant huggers, but  then they found greeting with the double cheek kiss the norm. Arguably full frontal impact is more contact than the cheek kiss, but the face time closeness still seems more intimate to me. One time a group of French exchange students made fun of American students for just nodding and saying “sup” when they passed each other. They couldn’t believe how coldly we greet each other. From my point of view it was surprising to suddenly be kissing people I’d never met before. I will admit that it did grow on me to the point that when I first returned home I felt rather distant from my friends when we didn’t kiss in greeting.

So work has given me whole new set of troubles with greetings. I’ve tried to work on the usual firm hand shake to give a good first impression. But at my work after the initial intro the fist pound is the most common, which is one I like a lot. Really it’s just the right amount of physical contact with people I’m just getting to know. I also find it amusing since I have fairly tiny hands so fist pounding a larger male hand looks comical. Basically the point of my story is the awkwardness I’ve had trying to do hand shakes. You could tell the first time one of the guys at work tried to do the hand shake thing with me where you slap hands, slide down the hand and then snap  off of each others fingers? Have I lost you? You’d recognize it if you saw it. Anyway, the whole thing is supposed to be over fairly quickly when you snap off each other’s hands, but somehow I didn’t snap off of his hand fast enough and ended up holding his hand awkwardly at the end. And even I know that is not what is supposed to happen! I thought that attempt was awkward until the next one… I tried to initiate it, thinking I was cool. But I didn’t know where to go from the start and ended up just shaking his hand like we were first being introduced. But not even a firm hand shake at that since I wasn’t trying for that when I started. The look of confusion on his face was priceless. After that it has been all first pounds. Safer-except for the ring I wear on my finger that may or may not be slicing people’s knuckles. But since my hands are tiny and the men’s fists I’ve been pounding are about 2x the size I’m banking on them not noticing my minuscule ring…The first time someone gets a bloody knuckle will be the last time I greet someone at work.