Francophile

In my first few days in Delhi, I've had some good success pretending to be French. I already automatically respond to nearly everything with 'merci' and 'oui,' and it's not entirely untrue since it is where I've been living for the last half of a year - so I'm not exactly lying when someone asks, "where do you come from?" and I respond, "France."

I hope this doesn't offend any of the Frenchies reading this blog - frankly, I think I represent your country well, except for the fact that I speak very little of your language.

Pretending to be French has its merits - I can ignore most of the comments in English I get, "hey, look at this," "pretty lady, you are nice," "I have something for you in your size,"
(WHAT - by the way) and just keep walking without feeling like I'm being an ass.

However, this did turn around and bite me in the rear today, when we were approached by a "government official" who turned out to have spent some time in Paris. His French was a little weird, but he did speak it to me, and I was at a bit of a loss and had to respond, "well, I do live in France, but I don't actually speak the language." Whoops.

I'm not deterred, however; I still think this is workable, especially until the basic Hindi Erin is teaching me replaces the automatic reflex of French words that come out of my mouth. It seems reasonable enough - when I was in Amsterdam during the beginning of the Iraq war and being American was potentially a bit dangerous, I told people I was Canadian.

Erin suggested that I pretend to be from a country where I can get away with it, like Deutschland, but then I lowered my head and admitted that my German is actually only incrementally better than my French.

Perhaps I'll pretend to be from Spain. There are lots of blondes in Spain, though not many that look like me. From meeting all of the Spaniards at Dechen Chöling, I think I could even fake the thick tonguey accent pretty well - at least well enough to fool some seedy Indian guy who has figured out how to say, "te amo, bonita."

love sarah