Place de la République

It's only 10 am and a third of my liter bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper is gone. Perhaps I should have made "no caffeine consumption" apart of my goals for the year. But I don't know if I could actually do it after a night like last night. It was another testament that I am no longer closer to 20 than I am to 30. Gah, that sounds horrible.

I think I may be addicted to karaoke.

I just can't get it out of my system.

I went again last night with my roommate (who has an AMAZING voice by the way), and stayed much to late. It happens every time. I say to myself, "Tonight, I will leave at 11pm," and then 11pm turns into 12:30am...on a work night. Which is much harder than a school night, let me tell you!

Funny things seem to be happening to me of late at the frequented karaoke bar. Two weeks ago a utterly intoxicated man in his 30s started talking to my friend. I could tell that she was a bit unnerved, so I took one for the team, and engaged him in conversation, so he would leave her alone. He was asking if one of us if we wanted to do a duet with him. My friend did not. Nor did I. But I think this is where my being much too nice comes to bite me in the butt. I agreed to sing with him, thinking he would leave us alone once we appeased his request. We sang. I sat down. Horror of horrors he followed me, and asked for my number. He ended up taking my phone, entered his number, and called his phone. He was too quick for me to give him fake digits. And to top it off, we was wearing something that looked much like a wedding band. I told myself that he would be much too drunk to remember what happened that night, and that he would forget all about in the coming days and weeks.  Not so much. Three days later I received a text from him wishing me a Merry Christmas, and asking how to contact me on facebook. Naturally, I ignored the text. (All kinds of ick, huh?).

Last night I had a song dedicated and sung to me. Wasn't quite sure what was going on. Still don't know if it was a joke, or if it was serious. I'm going to pretend that it was a joke.The guy was apart of our group, but I'd only met him once before at karaoke. But how embarrassing!

It's Friday, and you know that I have a great bit of music for you. Je promis that I'm getting to it. And karaoke does relate. Sort of.

It's been really hard of late to pick good songs to sing. I don't listen to the radio, so I don't really know any of the popular songs out at the moment. And my music collection is eclectic. Very eclectic. I'm more of an alternative/indie girl, but I have my fair share of classical and foreign music. That being the case, I haven't really rocked it at karaoke.

Lately, I've been listening to the soundtracks of Amélie and Marie Antoinette on repeat, mixed in with a little Arcade Fire. I love French music. And we all know K-pop holds a special place in my heart. I even have  more than half a dozen Czech/Slovak albums.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this gem on iTunes. Coeur de Pirate has an AMAZING sound, and this song is absolutely beautiful! It's one that touches my soul and almost brings tears to my eyes.

Please enjoy Place de la République by Coeur de Pirate.



Click here for French and English lyrics.

jste češka?

So I'm supposedly tri-lingual. Or rather, I'm fluent in one (English), studied another (French), and somewhat speak yet another (Czech). All in all, the last two languages are beautiful, at least to me, but not as useful as say Russian or Spanish, or even Mandarin for that matter. After having studied and lived in France for two months, and then serving a mission in the Czech Republic for a year and a half, you would think that my language skills would be impressive. But, unfortunately, I haven't had much use for either one of them.

Until now. French may not be a hot commodity on the West Coast, but on the East, it sure is. There are so many francophony here, and I work with a lot of them. There are a handful of guys from Algeria, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, etc that communicate in French. I have to admit that I haven't been brave enough to use the French that I do know, but who's to say that I won't?

I've now graduated to the level of cashier, and have gotten pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. I get to strike up random conversations with people that come through my lines. Some of them flop:

Me: Did you find everything you wanted today?
Boring customer: Yes.
Me: Do you have any fun plans for tonight?
BC: No, not really.

Ok then...

But some of them end up being incredibly cool. Like this one lady with a very distinctive Eastern European accent.

Me: Did you find everything you wanted today?
Lovely, Brilliant customer: Yes, and so much more. I came in for this beer, but ended up getting so much more...

She went on and on and somehow I got the impression that she was Czech. So randomly I asked, "Jste češka?" (are you Czech?)

She excitedly replied, "Ano!!! Jsem!"

I was flabbergasted. This is the first random Czech citizen I've run into the entire time I've been back. All other Czechs I've come in contact with I've already known. We carried on an entire conversation in Czech ("You speak so well," she said. "Oh, you're too kind," I said). We spoke about the weather, my mission, where she's from, what she's doing here, what I'm doing here, etc. It was wonderful! I was so excited/shocked/nervous (my language skills are definitely rusty) that I was tripping over my r's and ř's.

I now have a new Czech friend, though I don't know her name. And now that I'm not a missionary I can tykat (use the informal) and not feel guilty about it.

Oh, bliss!