Day 44: Whisper to be Heard

14 octobre 2009 (Day 44)
After dreaming about giant new black laundry machines, coffee, and a snake, I woke up early to do my laundry and homework. The laundry got washed and semi-dry. I say semi because it was still wet. I therefore used my creative abilities and had clothes hanging everywhere in my room. It looked quite nice, I will have to remember to decorate like that for Christmas. The homework didn’t get done. I received a letter saying that I didn’t need to get a carte de sejour but should apply for a long-stay visa. This of course has caused confusion and much time (but hopefully not money) wasted as I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to find out what I really need to do.
Mme Rialland lost her voice so culture was quite the adventure as we all had to lip read and ended up whispering ourselves. We continued our conversation about political parties in France and began to talk about authors who write in French who aren’t French. I ate lunch with Nana by some people speaking a very foreign language. I had no clue what they were speaking as I was munching on my yummy donut-like dessert. Annick spent a large portion of class today talking about the DELF and DELF tests after which we studied grammar. I had an epiphany of the obvious in class today. I realized that my problems in grammar are anything that M. le Prof didn’t teach me. I know solidly what he taught me, but the things that we never went over, simply took note of, or skimmed I don’t know. In college I haven’t had any classes where we study grammar, so my knowledge of French grammar really stopped when I learned about the subjunctive and some complex tenses.
I had another English lesson with Mathilde tonight. We had a mock interview and worked on possible responses to questions. She really does speak a lot better than she thinks. She has an interview to become an au pair next Thursday and I hope she does well. I have a paper due that I haven’t even started, which is so not like me!