Oh yeah, many of the people in my country suck in that respect, but typically those aren’t the world travelers. You can pretty much bet if someone feels the need to tell you that “we speak English in America. Learn it or get out,” they aren’t big on getting out of the country themselves.

Haha, strange how those people always seem to have the smallest English vocabularies. You’d think they’d put more effort into the language that they love so much.

Holy crap! People are the freaking worst. For all the joking people do about Parisians and whatnot, Americans are insanely unaccepting of people speaking even slightly diferent than them.

Haha, love it. 

This is on my to-do list. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Nah, I understand what you are saying, but there’s something extra to the shape it’s produced in. It sort of draws it up. It’s not just a thicker pancake. 

Most likely because not every single traveler had the exact same experience as you . . . 

If you’re going to go that route, don’t forget a baseball cap. Ideally from a sport they don’t have in the country you’re visiting, bonus points if the team is from Florida or has a solidly racist name.

Hmm, I don’t know. Whenever I make something flat like crepes, pancakes, or the like, I use this knockoff of a crepe batter a french-canadian ex girlfriend taught me, then mix it thicker or thinner depending on which one I’m after. For this, I mix my typical batter thick, so I’m willing to bet it would work with most…

Yeah, like I said to someone else, it’s not something that happens constantly. But, I’ve only had about a half dozen people clearly be annoyed with the way I pronounced something in a foreign country, and every single one of them was in Paris.

Oh yeah, ANY attempt to speak a foreign language in good faith should be lauded. It’s definitely, as you say, karmically on the person you are speaking with.

I didn’t mean to put people off the city; it’s a wonderful place. Parisians are just protective of their language. It’s well worth toughing-out for the sake of seeing the city. 

I have no clue if there is a term for it, but there’s a thing I learned from a Japanese friend where you start the pancake cooking, then add a ring of batter around the top of it before you flip it that helps make extremely fluffy pancakes.

Haha, that sounds awful, and I agree with you. Learn a dozen phrases, it’ll take you a half hour.

I agree with lots of you in that if you can’t take a month off from drinking with relative ease, you may have to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol, but I also think a lot of people are missing the point.

Be careful and think twice before you go in guns blazing Kelly. An absolute defense to defamation is truth.

I’m an on and off heavy drinker, and one of the ways I figured out that I butt very closely against that “has a problem,” line is that taking breaks is freaking awful. I’m antsy, I’m way more stressed, and I think about alcohol constantly. I can do it, but I definitely have to white-knuckle it.

On the other side, I’ve never understood why companies would want to do this either. Sure they save a few hundred bucks on a laptop upfront (though it sounds like they’re basically reimbursing everything anyway), but then they have what is essentially a corporate machine being used in it’s off hours by their rando…

Out here in Colorado, people tend to debate whether or not to include the last “O.” Coloradoan vs Coloradan.

Ugh, I have freaking relatives who say crap like this and I finally had to tell my uncle “fine, lets say that all these people actually exist, you officially know a half dozen black people who agree with your racist nonsense, what’s your point?. I can head down to the local mall and find a half dozen people who…