too close

France, lunch time

I slept a lot, really a lot. 11 hours...and now I feel completely dizzy. And it is not too good since I have to work a lot today...and so far I did nothing.. :-)

Last night I went to see the movie "Burn after reading" of the Coen brothers and I liked it. Brad Pitt is so funny. It reminded my The Big Lebowski because everything starts out of nothing, so out of something that didn't go the way it should have gone. Of course in this movie, none is so good as Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. But it was nice.

Anyway, this post is not about the movie. It is about the French again. I went to the movie with two French (a man and a woman), an Iranian, a Danish and an Algerian. An international group. The French girls has been sick for two weeks. She arrived and she kissed on the cheeks everyone. A French habit. I am not too much into physical contact with people I am not close to. I love hugs, I love kisses and so on, but only with people who are really close to me.

The cheek kissing is a bit like the American "hi, how are you doing?" meaning nothing, but everyone does it. Between the two, I, of course, prefer the American "hi, how are you doing" to the French cheek kissing. First, I never know how many times you are supposed to kiss the other person on the cheeks, because I found out that even within the same country it goes from two to four times. Second, if someone has just been sick or is still sick, I am not that happy about getting so close to his/her face. Third, here everyone kisses everyone else. Which is highly democratic, I admit, but it just doesn't work for me. I can't cheek kiss my boss. It is just weird. So, also for this, I stick out of the crowd. Everyone does it. Everyone cheek kiss everyone else. Me, I just freeze. And I am sorry, because I may look rude...but it is just not something for me.

By product of this, is that you get really close to smell the other person. If you read my blog since quite sometime, then you may have noticed that I am highly sensitive to smells. I would happily avoid to cheek kiss someone and thus get really close to him/her if she/he smells bad. But it seems that as long as I will be living here, I have to find a way to cope with this fact.

Last thing. French people talk close to each other. Another thing I love about Americans. They are really respectful (at least the ones I met). They are careful with other people spaces. They don't invade someone else space. French people are not that sensitive. So, a lot of times it happened to me to have a conversation with someone who was talking so close to my face that I got to think "hey, if I would have liked to kiss you, I would have already tried probably"...and so often for me speaking to a French ends up in a sort of dancing, the person coming closer to me and my face and me stepping back. Fortunately, this habit is not too common and widespread as the cheeck kissing.

I know, sometimes I may sound a bit of a tight ass.....I just like my spaces...