Close Encounters of the International Kind

"Show up. Speak French." -My friend Mia

"It takes all kinds to make a world."

"'Ça va?' 'Ça va. Ça va?' 'Ça va.'" -"Foux Da Fa Fa" by Flight of the Conchords

Kiel vi fartas?: Mi fartas suffiĉe bone. (I'm doing pretty okay.)

It's been a busy last couple of weeks for this blogger. I've continued in learning and using my Esperanto, for better or for worse, and it's hard to keep it together amidst all of the classes I'm taking, the things I'm trying to do to relax, and oh-good-God-I-have-a-week-to-memorize-a-bunch-of-music (workshop run by my voice teacher).

I've also had interesting developments in the multicultural-interaction department. There's a happy and a crappy, so I'll start with the crappy and get it out of the way.

Crappy: Flirtatious Brazillian

One of the great things about the lernu! site is that it fosters communications and friendships between people of different countries and cultures. Within a few days of my joining the site, I received a message from a member, which simply read "Hello!" in Esperanto. I responded, saying "Hi, my name's [name], what's yours?" After a long while, several weeks, the user responded, and I took a moment to check out their profile. Ah, he was a Brazillian! This is exciting.

We've been corresponding off-and-on for a couple of weeks, now, and as I sort-of anticipated, Mr. Brazil started getting... flirtatious. Fairly subtle, too, like calling me "My dear". Having had a previous experience on the site already with a guy who got fairly forward (note: my age is not posted on my profile), I was suspicious, but not overly so.

Then, Mr. Brazil said it: "Do you have Skype? I like you."

Commence cringing. My mother had warned me that a Brazilian man would be more forward, but I wasn't expecting this kind of forward. The best plan of attack was to immediately cool off. He hasn't contacted me all week. Yay?

Happy: Cute French Guy

I'll say it now: I love swing-dancing. It's fun, it's flirty, and it's a great thing to do with one's friends. The other day, I went to the monthly swing dance at a community center in a nearby city, where I met up with a bunch of buddies from church. One of my friends, Mia, had specifically requested my presence, because she happened to have a certain French exchange student for a few weeks, and she had brought him along. Apparently, I'm the only person she knows who speaks French.

Needless to say, I used this to my advantage a bit. I followed Mia's "No flirting" rule, but I still had fun with Mr. Dijon. ;) Specifically, I taught him to dance. In French.

Evening made? I think so. He was highly attractive. And he wore a v-neck t-shirt (v-necks on guys are very attractive to me, okay?).

Bonus!

Another happy recently! I'm in a video announcing the viewer takeover of the DIY fashion website, Threadbanger. The idea of the site is that it's part online TV channel, part community. Unfortunately, the hosts of the two main TV shows were FIRED (I don't know why). Upset, devastated, confused, a few of us regular contributors to the forums (including many a moderator) decided to band together and take over the site in our own way, producing our own tutorial videos. I am officially in two of the videos (one's been posted, one's coming soon), and I plan on making several tutorials to share when I have a few hours to myself.

Go ahead and check out the video! I'm so excited to be lumped together with such creative people.



Until next time, friendsies!