Dining Out

So last week was our last week of school, and John and I only have a few more days left in Montpellier before we head off to meet Grandma and Ellie for a few weeks of travel through Burgundy and Champagne. Both of us had gotten to the point in our studies where we were starting to get a little bored with the classes, so I think that we are leaving at just the right time. We're at the point where we're comfortable communicating with french speakers, and in my class at least, we were starting to delve into some more advanced grammar studies which, while useful, were about as interesting as studying English grammar back in high school.

We had dinner with some friends the other night, which was notable for the shockingly obnoxious American couple that was sitting at an adjacent table. I felt extremely sorry for the waiter, who showed an exhorbitant amount of patience with these people who kept intermittently calling him "garcon" in order to get his attention and then yelling loudly about the food or the wine or whatever. I wanted to tell the waiter that he shouldn't get a bad impression about Americans based on this couple's behavior, which would be considered just as obnoxiously rude in an American restaurant, but before I had the chance, the husband swiveled around in his chair in order to engage our table in some conversation about what we had decided to order for dinner. After talking to them for a few minutes I realized that they were actually perfectly nice people, surprisingly well travelled, and very pleasant to talk to. I was trying to figure out why they were acting like such arrogant pricks a mere 5 minutes ago, when the husband asked me:

"So what's a good tip around here? We're totally clueless about this stuff."

Bingo. Clueless. I wonder if a lot of Americans give the rest of us a bad reputation as being arrogant and obnoxious simply because they're clueless. This couple was clearly very nice and obviously didn't intend to be rude, they just had no idea that they were offending the waiter and annoying everyone else around them by calling so much attention to themselves. I mean if something is considered rude in your country, it's probably not a good idea to do it in another country. After I told them how much to leave for the tip, I thought about also mentioning that they also shouldn't yell "garcon" across a restaurant in order to get the waiter, when the husband said:

"So what state do you live in? We're from Michigan but we tell everyone that we're Canadian."

....I guess it won't be Americans who end up with a bad reputation after all.