11 fevrier 2010 (Day 164)
Class was pretty crazy today. In phonetics-phonology we went over how you produce sounds and we are supposed to memorize how you do all the vowels and all the anatomical names of body parts that help in sound production. I wish I had my Andy Anderson notes… So pretty much it is a crazy hard class. I also don’t know how much I should be studying for my classes because they aren’t like American classes at all and so I have no idea. Hannah and I went to change our SUAPS (sports/gym) cards so that we could go to weight lifting.
We went to a meeting for ISEP in town. Jane had made homemade chocolate chip cookies that were really good. I ate quite a few. I am a cookie addict! This was evidenced by my eating lots of cookies, fantasizing about making cookies during the symphony, and then making cookies that night! The meeting was pretty pointless (other than the cookies). It was also a meeting for the frenchies who are going to America, so we had to sit around listening to that meeting.
The symphony was great. Hannah, Jessica, Kev, and I met up and went together. We were up on the first balcony and listened to Le Sacre du Printemps. They had a really large orchestra this time, and I’m pretty sure my violin playing Robin Hood look alike was there (but I wasn’t close enough to be sure). There were also some musicians who looked so young- like kids my age! They did a great job though and as usual I was enamored by the music and calm and peaceful. This calm peacefulness ended after the intermission. The orchestra started to play some crappy music from Fantasia or something like that where it sounds like a storm and it made all of us girls very agitated and uptight. This agitation led us to walking all the way home. The wait for the next tram was 28 minutes, so we started walking so that we wouldn’t be cold. By the time the tram caught up with us we were only three stops from home, so we decided to walk the rest of the way. It was a really nice evening walk (we got in well before midnight) and helped us all burn off our built up agitation from the last piece. We decided that we girls probably would have left if Kevin wasn’t there. Kevin had a nice time. He is quite the connoisseur of the arts as he enjoys music and plays and such. He is planning on doing a sort of social kind of work where he organizes social stuff and will be traveling all over southern France a lot this summer. He is really pationate about his work and quite assertive. By assertive I mean he always says what he thinks is right or wrong, good or bad. I guess opinionated may be a better word. We had a really interesting discussion about dating in France (he brought up the fragile young single adult group thing again). This is what I gleaned from the conversation. Dating in France is indeed not like dating in the US. You pretty much just ask the girl to hang out and do stuff together. If you REALLY REALLY like her and want to let her know you will offer to pay for one of these said activities (dinner, movie, concert, whatever). If the girl is interested in you, she will accept the offer for you to pay, if not, she declines. So the systems definitely has its advantages and disadvantages. You know for sure when a boy likes you, but you don’t really date. The whole ‘paying’ thing could definitely lead to some awkward dates/circumstances. And some of us don’t have money so we like having the guys pay. Kev was quite insistent that the French way of dating was more magical though and that it is more of a game than dating in the US and that dates don’t have to be all extravagant here. I agree the we go overboard on prom and such, but Kev thinks that it is better to have simple dates so that you really get to know and talk to the person and aren’t dating them because they take you on cool dates (his thoughts, not mine about dating in America). So that was definitely interesting. I don’t know which system I’d prefer, but I don’t know if I would enjoy knowing flat out that a guy really really liked me by him offering to pay.
So I tried making no-bake cookies tonight with nutella instead of peanut butter. Either I put in a tad too much nutella, or they are just too different, but the cookies didn’t work out. The nutella also gave them an odd flavor that I didn’t like at all. I’m planning on trying again tomorrow.
