Day 185: Stupid boys. Gay boys. Funny boys.

4 mars 2010 (Day 185)
Boy do I need to get better at going to bed. I don’t know how it is, but I just have loads of things to do and I never seem to do them all. I had to wake up early to do homework. Phonetics is really getting hard. Today Ali, our teacher (a man…think Prince Ali from Aladdin) taught us a concept (placement in your mouth of all the different sound productions) and then had us put away our notes and started quizzing us on it. Is he crazy or are French kids expected to have photographic memories because I can assure you it will take me a couple of hours of studying to get close to being able to do the exercise correctly.
Hannah was having boy problems today so we went on a nice anti-boy run after class. I made a great mix and with my energy from not sleeping I was practically a bouncy ball on the run. Hannah just laughed at me and after three miles she let me go off by myself and run some more (and faster) which I did. I felt really good running today.
I made a yummy omelet with ham cheese and tomato for lunch and then went shopping to get some frozen ratatouille vegetables to have with my blé for dinner. Blé is buckwheat and it is really good, I recommend it if you are sick of pasta and rice. I had a really nice dinner of my ratatouille and buckwheat with Cole and Darryl. They are both newbies with ISEP. Cole is this cute skinny gay feminine studies major. I’m not sure what Darryl is studying, but she is pretty deer-in-the-headlights because she doesn’t know French. It was fun and funny talking to them. Apparently Cole likes Prada and is buying a suitcase here that costs a couple hundred euros…no big deal for them of course.
I failed at getting homework done (yet again) but I did get lots of other things crossed off my to do list, including some important things like talking to a USU adviser. She told me some stuff that I didn’t know…like that the teaching program takes 3 semesters and a pre-req I need to take. It looks like I should (if there are no class scheduling clashes) finish up with school in 5 semesters.
Oh man, the missionaries never fail to make me laugh. Today it was Elder Knapp’s turn to remind me about our rendez-vous (meeting or RDV) with Han tomorrow. We started chit chatting (don’t worry it was still under 10 minutes), still on relatively church topics. Elder Knapp was telling me (because there was lots of background noise) that Elder Lazarev was in the kitchen, with a knife between his teeth pretending to be a pirate. Bless that kid’s heart, he is such a great missionary. Elder Knapp then told me, “If I wasn’t a missionary I’d be calling you right now just to talk.” This got a sufficiently amusing response out of Elder Lazarev and made me laugh. They are all such teases! I got informed about what they are planning on teaching Han so that I can study up a little (it is just more fun that way, be like a boy scout, be prepared, right?). I’m so excited for Han though, she is really interested in the church and there is a branch in the town that she will be moving to, which is great news!