Word: french
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...Come fall, Lowell will be home to Flehinger and his family, which includes his wife, Suzanne; a son, soon to be 11; and Jacques Derridag—a chiwawa and corgi mix named after the deceased French philosopher Jacques Derrida. He also has a 21-year-old son at Skidmore College, whom Eck says could give Flehinger additional expertise in relating to students' needs...
...Affirmation-starved France usually loves global titles of any kind (one big reason French competitors tend to outnumber foreign rivals in quixotic contests like reverse round-the-world solo yachting races and France's annual international plumb-spitting tournaments). But the news that les français had kept their crown as the world's most troublesome tourists provoked a collective Gallic shriek. "The French Are the Worst Tourists on Earth," blared the website for Libération above a story on this year's survey. "Do French Tourists Abroad Do Their Country Honor?" radio-news station France Info asked...
Given their nation's long reign as the world's most visited country, you'd expect the French to know a thing or two about insufferable tourists. It turns out they do - and are proving it to the rest of the world. In a poll carried out by online travel site Expedia and released on Thursday, July 9, French tourists were viewed as the orneriest for the third year running. (Read TIME's story on last year's poll...
...what specifically are French voyagers faulted for? The Expedia poll says French travelers are the biggest skinflints, the worst tippers and the least able or inclined to speak foreign languages. They also finished next to last in terms of their politeness and behavior. (The worst offenders in both those categories were - wait for it - Americans, who were also designated most likely to complain...
...Even where it did score well in the survey, Team France suffered stinging humiliation. Not only were the French denied the Best Dressed championship by the Italians, for example, but they lost second spot to the Brits - whose fashion sense is usually likened to that of the poll's slob champs, the Yanks. France's fourth-place finish for "Most Quiet" was tarnished by the Wagnerian-lunged Germans' walking off with the bronze. (See pictures of East Germany making light of its past...