It Had to Happen Eventually

Do you ever have those moments where nothing seems to be going the way you thought it would and all you can do is laugh about it? That was the situation for my roommate Cheri and I tonight. Let's start from the beginning.

Earlier today when I asked Cheri what she wanted to do for dinner she suggested going out to eat.  Sounds great! We haven't gone out for a meal in a few days and having been in Marseille for a week we could obviously handle ourselves.  It would be no problem. So at 7 o'clock Cheri and I left our apartment to walk to about 5 minutes to Castellane where there would be plenty of restaurants to chose from.

Castellane, via

As Cheri and I start walking around we aren't quite sure what we want to eat but first we need to find places that our open.  As we wander around we read a few menu's that restaurants have posted outside of their doors and we aren't sure where we want to eat because we can only recognize a few items off of each menu.  (I know a little French and Cheri knows even less)


We finally come across a pizza restaurant and figure, why not, at least we will understand what we are ordering (what a silly thought to have).  Cheri and I see no one in the restaurant from the door but we do not see any hours posted so we walk in.  We walk through two empty dining rooms before we see 3 men sitting at a table (which we came to realize later that they were staff eating dinner).  A young man hops up and asks us something in french and I just respond with "Oui!" and he takes us to our table.  At this point we were questioning ourselves if we were even supposed to be in the restaurant because no one else was there.

As we read through the menu we realize that there is at least one word in every description of the various pizza's that we do not know.  We decide to just go for it and then we wait and then we wait some more.  Were we supposed to go up to the bar and tell someone we were ready to order? Was someone going to come take our order? We were seated to our table so the thought would be that someone would come back but as the minutes tick bye we question ourselves more and more.  I am making random eye contact with the bartender hoping that he can see in my eyes that we don't know what is going on or that someone should come to our table.  (Did I mention that the same 5 Amy Winehouse songs are playing on repeat the whole time?)

Eventually a different man came to take our order.  I ordered my mozzarella pizza while Cheri tried to order one called "La Mama." That poor waiter.  He tried to explain to us why Cheri could not order said pizza, even started using hand motions, but alas it was no use.  I think he eventually saw our utterly confused faces and Cheri just ordered what I got.  He asked us what we wanted to drink and I responded (in french) with water.  I thought I knew how to pronounce water but maybe I don't because he looked at me with just as a confused face as I was just looking at him with.  I said it a couple different ways, even in english, and eventually he understood.  At this point Cheri and I were just laughing to ourselves about how ridiculous this evening has gone.

My pizza came with olives - not sure how that happened. Cheri's did not come with olives. We ordered the same thing.

As we were listening to "Rehab" for the 4th time and we were finishing up our pizza I realized that I wasn't going to finish all my pizza but I waned to take it home with me.  Neither of us wanted to eat the whole pizza, or leave it behind, but we did not know how to ask for a box.  At this point I texted one of my supervisors asking for the right words and thankfully he responded right away.  When we asked for our check we also asked for a box (simply showing our waiter the text message so there would be no confusion).  The waiter took our plates away and I thought how nice, they box it up for you here!  A few minutes later this is what was brought back to us.

Thanks?

At 8:30 Cheri and I had paid the check, said thank you to our waiter, and started the walk home.  Did our evening end up the way we thought it would?  No, but honestly I'm not quite sure how I imagined it going in the first place.  Thank goodness our French will get better the longer we stay here.  Every day is a lesson and we survived today and got a few good laughs out of it as well.

à bientôt!