i speak english. wall street english.

that's an ad all over the metro for some english-speaking school. i love how wall street is this emblem of america, of the english you'd want to speak, the place you'd want to be in. it's also interesting that the smiling face who speaks wall street english is, in fact, a woman, and not a man. because everyone knows wall street isn't just a boys club. right.
i have to be quick because i need to get ready for the third holiday of the month (after having eaten a lot, fasted, we'll be sitting in huts), but i wanted to say a word about this weekend, in which marielle and rachel came. it was great fun, but something interesting that hadn't happened to me before occured. i finally was introduced to the french rudeness that people have been asking me about for quite some time now. twice. first the woman from whom i ordered marielle and rachel's crepes was snide and acting like she couldn't understand my french, even putting the price on the calculator when i couldn't hear what she said the first time. meanwhile her accent was also terrible and she wasn't french.
the guy at the brasserie around the corner from me also wasn't particularly friendly--when i was told breakfast would no longer be served and had to figure out what i wanted, he stood over me, refusing to give me more time, and i was pressured into getting three fried eggs i just didn't want. i guess they don't have to be nice and friendly here because they're not getting tipped anyway. so then i wonder, is the no-bullshit way, in which the servers don't pretend to be nice because they know they'll get nothing out of it favorable? does it beat the over-friendly way of the waitstaff in the states, which always leads me to snidely remark, when the sugary waitress who took my order goes away, "she's deefinitely not from new york."? i'm not so sure. in some ways maybe the french should be admired for lacking the fakeness that goes along with our country.
but i still don't want to feel like i'm pissing off my waiter by taking an extra minute to peruse the menu.