\tThe moment I volunteered to make a phone call for Bill this morning, I instantly regretted opening my big mouth.
\n \tHe and Kaitlyn are heading up to Chamrousse to go skiing. We\u0092ve gotten two feet of snow down here this week; they\u0092re sure to have more on the top of the mountain. It\u0092s sunny, there\u0092s fresh snow… it\u0092s perfect.
\n\tI\u0092d love to go but before all this snow fell I accepted an invitation from a girlfriend to go shopping in Lyon.. which means a grown up lunch, a stop or two at Starbucks and some window shopping… not a bad alternative. It\u0092s not like I\u0092m staying home to mop or something. I\u0092d never take that option. Never. Just look at my floors and you\u0092ll believe me.
\n \tSince this is Kaitlyn\u0092s first time on skis this year, Bill figured it would be a good time for a refresher course with a real instructor. He planned on piling her into the car and getting to Chamrousse when it opened at 9. At 9, Kaitlyn was still eating her oatmeal and coloring some Barbie cut-out doll she\u0092d printed off the \u0093dot com\u0094 as she calls it. He was getting increasingly frustrated and that was when I boldly volunteered to call the ski school and see if we could even get a lesson for Kaitlyn this morning. Now it is far FAR easier to conduct such business in person. In person you can point, you can look confused, you can act things out if necessary. (I\u0092ve gotten very good at charades.) On the phone you can ask someone to repeat himself… over and over and over.
\n\tAs they were finally heading out to the car, Bill asked me if I would make the call. I hemmed and hawed then realized I had made the offer, I couldn\u0092t really refuse. So I looked up the number, looked up some key words on the ski school\u0092s website, and dialed.
\n\tCertainly, the moment I opened my mouth, the woman knew I don\u0092t speak French very well. Still, she rattled off her answers and questions at a pretty rapid pace. About three questions in, I had to ask her to repeat herself. That\u0092s when she slowed down and I could, amazingly, understand her. I managed to tell her Kaitlyn\u0092s age, the level she\u0092s completed in lessons already (they have very clearly defined levels for the kids at the French ski schools… all the same), that she wants a teacher who speaks English, that she wants the lesson for an hour and a half, that I know the meeting point she told me about, Bill\u0092s phone number (although I kept trying to give her a number that doesn\u0092t exist), and finally our credit card number.
\n\tBill and Kaitlyn are about halfway up there now. I guess we\u0092ll find out in about a half an hour if I did the whole thing correctly. I sure hope I did. It\u0092s one thing when you goof up your own matter. It\u0092s another when you try to do someone a favor and end up sending them into a quagmire of lingual misunderstandings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The moment I volunteered to make a phone call for Bill this morning, I instantly regretted opening my big mouth. He and Kaitlyn are heading up to Chamrousse to go skiing. We\u0092ve gotten two feet of snow down here this week; they\u0092re sure to have more on the top of the mountain. It\u0092s sunny, there\u0092s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}