I’ve been gaining confidence in the whole morning greeting thing. Bonjour, easy enough. When you are working from a script, it all goes well until people start hitting you with the variations.

So this morning as I’m greeting people, I meet the secretary, “bonjour” I say, “something something something” she say in return. I assume its all good and turn to walk out….

Then I get another string of French, this time in a universal tone of voice that tells me I’ve committed some sort of faux pas. Oh no!

I need help. (ok basic high school French, but still more than I have…)

Actually I was being asked “Ça va?” (How are you?) But not knowing any better, just ignoring it as a bit of the conversation I didn’t understand. How rude!

Oh well, she explained my error. Tomorrow is another day, a day in which I’ll have a new canned response ready: Ça va bien!