Just Some French Oddities

France is sometimes marked as a pessimistic country. Given these French proverbs, you can see why:
"Wait until it is night before you say it has been a fine day." (goodness!)
"The crow is no whiter for being washed." (pigeons, too)
"Everything passes, everything breaks, everything wearies." (true, but hardly motivational)
"Honey is sweet but bees sting." (normal people would put that the other way around)
"It's all very well in our practice, but it will never work in theory." (doesn't that pretty much say it all?)

Now let's inspect some prices in France. The gist: expensive! Drinks are expensive, especially at restaurants. I once ordered an orangina (a regular 50 cl bottle you'd get in the US) and it ended up being something like 6.80 euros! At Cyrano de Bergerac the other night, cans of pop, juice, and water (oh yeah and water is odd and carbonated here if it's a fancy dinner) were 4 euros each. Books are reasonably priced except for ones in other languages, where your basic paperback is about 11 euros, about $15. Since so many stores here focus on one item to offer (cheese stores, bakeries, etc.), the ones that sell it all (like Monoprix which is like a mini Target) cost a LOT, I guess for the luxury of only making one stop for shopping. Bread is really cheap here, though. McDonalds is probably the cheapest place it is possible to go for lunch unless you buy one baguette.

As for church differences, it is interesting to note that they only have about 2/3 of the hymns. Their titles are ALWAYS the first line of the song, never a seperate title. (Example, in English, "How Great Thou Art" starts with the words "O Lord, My God." In France, it is called "Savieur Mon Dieu," which is the first line.) Also of the hymns they have, about half of them are in either a different key or different time signature or both. I have no idea why this is. But in scouring to find something I can play when I don't know what hymns they are because they're in FRENCH, I soon realized I can't browse the music to find it. So pretty much, every time I have to play at church, I am sight reading. In both music AND spoken language, if I decide to try to sing along. Papi said you might find that interesting, Karma.