Sunrise from my room
6 octobre 2009 (Day 36)
Today was a day to observe the clouds. They moved so swiftly today and it made it seem as if they were playing hide and seek with the sun and the moon. My brain was also in the clouds today. I almost (but I didn’t) left for class an hour early this morning. Writing was yet another fun day of embarrassment. Luckily I really like Annick and she knows she can tease without me being completely mortified. So today we all talked about how I don’t employ verb tenses correctly. My favorite part of this was that her remedy was time in France speaking and listening to the natives. The problem with this is I don’t often have the opportunity to speak with native French speakers and when I try to listen to them on the tram or at lunch, my brain receives it and background noise that is not French. Annick gave a really funny antidote today about how when you first come to France after having studied French, you get on the bus in Paris and hear everyone speak, but your brain just registers it as noise and wants it to stop. She then continued to talk about how one day it will just all click, or at least your comprehension will come in slow undulations. I wanted to tell her that I was still in the “first day” stage and that it still just sounds like noisy gibberish that is not French. I get really bad grades in writing, just in case anyone was wondering.
Lunch was a battle today. Rubis was full of people so I went back to the Terte. There I ventured into the traditional cuisine line. I had yummy scalloped potatoes, decent fish [especially since I don’t like fish], and awful cooked spinach. I now know that I don’t like cooked spinach though.
The cutest franco-italian came in and played the piano before Theatre today. He was really good at playing and really cute too. Sadly Annick kicked him out much to our lament. Everyone is hoping to see him again because the girls decided that I need to flirt with him since I think he is cute (oh lo lo!). Theatre was really long today. We went over our first scene and the lead needs help. He is from Venezuela so his accent isn’t the greatest and he didn’t have his parts memorized at all so he was saying them in the wrong tone and it took a really long time to get through the first scene. Hopefully he’ll study the piece more and get better because it wore me out when we were working in partners correcting him and trying to explain the tonality he should have in French.
We took an easy listening test today in oral French. I actually started falling asleep the third time we listened to the excerpt. Luckily to end my sleepiness, we started actually conversing (for the first time in our conversation class) about the ideal age to die, find out about Santa Claus, get married, etc. It was a lot of fun to hear everyone’s opinions.
I had a good track workout today. There were loads of people on the track (a couple of classes) but I was one of very few girls in shorts. There were people in pants, long sleeves, polos…it is crazy! I talked to an older gentleman who was coaching a little bit. He told me I was pretty fast (ha!) and asked if I did track. We talked a little bit and I accidentally told him I live at 4000 meters, not 4000 feet. Um, for those of you who do math, that is a little over 9000 feet off….oops. I also lost my key. Luckily it was found quickly where I was stretching in the grass. What a tender mercy to find it!
I had dinner with John my Scottish friend. We talked about rice, politics, the EU, and the UK. I had brown rice with butter, apple juice, and a carrot. I am a pro rice chef, I should show all the Asians here how Uncle Ben does rice.
