Our Resident Frenchman

The students at the language school here hail from a number of different countries. Probably a good half of us are Americans, but the others come from Great Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, etc. Some of the most amusing conversations I've ever heard come about when there's a table or bus full of us from the US, England, France and Germany. Somehow in a mix of Arabic, English, French and German, we manage to have great dialogues about the West's involvement in the current problems in the Middle East. No matter what twists and turns the conversations take, they always end the same way: We blame the Belgians. For everything.

We have one lone resident Frenchman in the group. Normally I'm not one for stereotypes, but this guy, Christoff, fits the American stereotype of a Frenchman in every possible way. One of the first days I was here, he had written down the name of the city where he's from and was passing it around, asking people to try and pronounce it. After four or five people gave it a whirl, he shook his head, curled his upper lip and announced in his thick French accent, "You say it like a bas-turd." Whenever he hears anyone complain about anything, he curls under his bottom lip, wrinkles his nose and starts to sniff, then shakes his head before mumbling something along the lines of "Poor ba-by." He mocks others almost constantly, though I have noticed that if you just don't respond he appears mildly annoyed or confused and lets it go. I guess in this way he reminds me more of the resident 10-year-old bully on the playground than a 34-year-old Frenchman. And I suppose he doesn't always enjoy being surrounded by so many Americans all the time, lol. But it's this very mix of cultures and attitudes and languages
and outlooks that makes the experience so rich.