Though we started off in the kitchen for the birthday celebrations, it got far too hot as more people wandered in so once again we moved outside. There were lots of people which makes it hard for me to join in conversations so I was happily following the flow and answering things addressed to me. Before long one of the French guys, who so my sister can learn more names is called Julian (one of 2), asked me if I understood what people were saying because I was keeping very quiet. Me, quiet! I know! He's a quiet one himself so he can hardly talk, nor does he have my excuse! Despite protests of an early class I was forced into a can or 2 of beer but I managed to slip away around midnight and hop into bed for my 40 winks.
That didn't stop me oversleeping, though I do blame my phone, aka alarm, for not making noise. It's fine today so was clearly just tempermental. However, I was up and dressed and ready to go in 15 minutes breakfast in hand. Our first class was French grammar, the one for francophones who failed the grammar test. It went right back to basics. It was quite strange, because we know all this grammar ( the 8 classifications of words and basic sentence structure) but some of the other students clearly didn't and asked questions that we knew the answers to. It just highlights how ignorant we get about the grammar of our mother tongue since we never really need to know it, just how to use it.
Over lunch we headed to the cultural centre to register properly and get our student cards. Everyone else looks really grumpy but I asked if I was allowed to smile. Despite my most charming smile it's not the best of photos but I can blame the bouffant, 80's style-perm-gone-wrong hair. Oh well, at least it's only for 4 months!
Later we headed to our culture, literature and society module. Well, weren't we in for a pretty shock! It was the second 3 hour block of french. This requires some concentration I have to say and it was hard to follow everything the lecturer was saying. At one point, we were handed a sign up sheet, for which we duly picked a group and wrote our names but had absolutely no idea what it was for. This module involves lots of reading as well. There are 3 books to read over the semester and lots of other things to read every week, which in most cases you might get away with not reading all of them but with 20% of the module being on the quality of language, which as the only non-francophones in the class Vic. and I can kiss goodbye to, we are left with only a 20% margin to pass. As I said, a little bit of a shock which sent us to get ice-cream. I'm not that stressed about it though, probably because I'm pretty laid back. Maybe the day before either of the exams when I still don't know anything, but I'm an eternal optimist. I can't say the same for Victoria who is rather stressed, a little discouraged and still suffering with her sun burn. Oh dear. She'd barely eaten and after our class today (which finished at 10pm) she was proposing just pop tarts for dinner. I'll have none of that so I sent her off with a frozen portion of chilli so she didn't have to cook. (I might wish I'd never written that as it's quite a motherly thing to say and the type of thing that will make people tell me I'm bound to want children one day!)
Today was some sort of holiday [already I know!] so that was our only class of the day. I had a fairly lazy day, chilling out in the kitchen with the frenchies. I laughed at their idea of cooking. So far it has included frozen meals, plain pasta with bacon and toast. Today was the oddest, tomatoes, sweetcorn, plain pasta and toast. None of it together, just 4 separate things. And they say the French know how to cook. Lies, I tell you, all lies! Eventually I settled to some academic work, even hitting the library to get out the prescibed reading for next week. I haven't started it yet but there's always tomorrow!
I've just killed an ant. I really hope it was an ant. I will not be happy if it was a spider. Oh and one more wildlife update since I'm at it; there are skunks on campus. I thought I'd seen one on my meanderings last night but wasn't sure. My decision as to it's species was based on a comparison to the skunk in Bambi, which isn't the most legitimate source of knowledge, but I asked about it today and clearly Disney is educational.
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