Let's ignore the crying and talk about free pizza :)

The bruise on my arm, though inevitably in some form or other, is impressively not dramatic. Perhaps my bruising tendencies are fading. That would be awesome.
Plans for playing a mini match on Wednesday were scuppered by the rain. Wednesday was not the greatest day in the world. We got our grammar tests back. A respectable mark, but I wanted to clarify something with the tutor who promptly told me that my French was appalling. Even though I returned to my seat she came over just to reassure that my French really is that bad. I didn't stay long after that. So Victoria and I were sat in my room and Mihai walked past, so I asked him to tell me bluntly how bad my French was. Boys fail at being tactful. I got all worked up, not just about my French but about how I felt I wouldn't be able to get a good enough grade to cancel out last years. I cried. Victoria was all lovely and supportive. Mihai (and I will blame the fact that he's male) quite frankly was useless. After I had stopped crying, he just said "it's just a mark". I can't think of much worse he could have said!
I rang my mum afterwards and sent my sister many abusive messages for not being on skype when I needed her. I got all worked up again and cried down the phone to my mum. Making it the second time in 2 weeks and I am not a crying kinda of girl really. Perhaps this is why they have organised for my sister to come and visit next week. I'm very excited by this. :D She doesn't realise how much I am going to invade her personal space when she gets here.
Later that evening the boys kept commenting that I looked really tired and my eyes were red so I should go to bed. I told them it was because I'd been crying. After explaining, they thoroughly insulted the tutor, offered to bash her over the head and told me my French was good. There was a hug or 2 thrown in for good measure. I love these boys :)

Thursday evening unfolded quite nicely. It started off with no plan and turned into prancing around to classic rock and jazz before deciding that ordering takeaway was a brilliant idea. We looked up domino's and placed an order on-line. I noticed that we'd ordered too many cheesy breads so I rang up to correct the order. This didn't quite go to plan. The first order turned up, much to our confusion as well as the delivery man. He rang up and we sorted stuff out. Turns out the guy on the phone hadn't realised we were correcting an order. He told us to keep the extra food and just pay for what we wanted. There's us thinking, sweet, free cheesy bread! It wasn't long before the guy rang back. He hadn't been able to get hold of the second delivery and so told us to keep it, free of charge. We effectively got more than double our order. It was a HUUUUGE amount of food! We shared some out on the corridor and boxed up the rest as leftovers (I think I'll get at least a 4th meal out of it). We whacked on Mamma Mia to watch and sang along to our hearts content before being asked to quieten down. It was kinda late and I suppose we were singing pretty loud. There were lots of other noisy people on the corridor too though! Tsk, those French boys! It was a fun evening! After the girls had gone to bed, I stayed in the kitchen with the boys, generally just laughing at them.

Friday was quite dull, I didn't do much except prepare my cake for the souper international. It was more fun than I was expecting it to be. Only one of the 4 brought a main course so they ordered in pizza. That would have been pizza overload, so I avoided it and munched on lasagna instead. It was very chilled out, everyone was having a laugh and joking. One of the profs. had brought her chum who took out his guitar and sang for us. Somehow I got made to sing, only they picked Hey Jude and I don't know most of the lyrics! Totally made it up!

I've already had my class this morning but I sort of want to take a nap. I should get some work done but sleep is just so much more inviting!

The myth of French cuisine

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.