Ungrateful Frenchmen and their gestures.

At the conference this past week this one French colleague I met was saying that the only other paper on his topic he was giving a talk on was scheduled for the same time he was giving his talk, so since I happened to be at the other talk, I picked up the handout for him and gave it to him when I ran into him at a coffee break. He was like, "Oh, thank you so much!", but then he turned his back to me to go back talking to the people he was talking with. A similar thing happened with another Frenchman at school when I once did a similar unexpected favor.

I also have met a shitload of French people this past year. In the past, I thought their wacky gestures -- the eye-rolling, the puffing up the cheeks and blowing out their breath at stupid things, etc. -- was part of their individual personalities, but now that I've met a lot of them, I realize now it's not, and that I have to look beyond that.