Odds and Ends

You know, even if you go North to South or East to West in the States, there are going to be major differences in people, lifestyle, manners...so going to another country was the same thing.
When we got here, we learned that the customary greeting is what the French call "la bise."
Now, la bise custom changes with where you live.  In the Paris area, where we started out, it was 4 times, alternating cheeks twice.  This could wear you out on a Sunday morning with, say, 80 or more people in church.  That is minimum 640 kisses, because you do it when you say good-bye, too!  Think about it! 

In the Paris area, men don't really do the bise with other men except for family.  So when we moved to northern France, on the Belgian border, imagine Don's shock the first Sunday when our first guy attendee, gave the bise to him!  Thankfully, up here it is maximum of 2, one on each cheek!  From then on, when Don saw a guy coming, his hand shot out really fast...you know, the old "a handshake is better than a kiss!"

When you are invited to dinner, it is customary to bring flowers or wine; champagne, if it is a celebration or a business dinner.  We don't drink, so on occasion this caused some funny things!  We were dealing with a man, trying to buy his building for our church, so we invited him over for a Mexican dinner.  In those days, you couldn't find Mexican stuff like Old El Paso...so it was all homemade!  Anyway, he showed up with 2 bottles of expensive champagne.  We explained that we didn't drink and he was okay with that and as he was leaving, we tried to give the champagne back.  It was very expensive champagne!  He refused and said to keep it as a souvenir.  I didn't know what to do with it, so I shoved it in the back of our under the stairs storage closet.  Spring cleaning time rolled around, and there was that champagne!  So I said to myself, "Barbecue season is here!  Maybe this would be good to use on the meat!"  Not knowing a thing about alcohol, or its containers, I nearly blew my hand off when I finally wangled that cork out of the bottle!  Champagne spewed everywhere!  It was dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls.  When we finally got the mess cleaned up, I set to barbecuing, and it was really good!  Smoked that meat and made it tender and tasty! 

There is more to that story, but will save it for another day!  May God bless you all!  Have a great Lord's day!