Getting Chilly

Well, another week completed. All that remains for my school week to be finished is Koh Lanta, which is 2 hours from now. Its getting intense since its down to 8 or 9 people. I don’t know if it’s a result of improved french or just caring more about the show, but im following the strategy better. I also understood what was on the radio this morning, instead of having it sound like mush, so that must mean progress, too. I think the thing about improving steadily because you have no choice, with anything but especially with language when you are totally immersed, is that you dont really realize how much you are improving because you get just a bit better each day. It’s like when you are young and you are growing taller. You don’t notice it, but then one day you look around and realize you are almost as tall as your mom. You just have to step back a little bit to see where you started and see where you currently are, and then the distance in between is pretty incredible, especially because you didnt really see it happening. So i think my french probably is improving but its just that there are still so many challenging new things to learn so it is still difficult.


I had three days without any homework this week. It was great. i came home, watched TV(which is sort of homework for me since it's in french) knitted and hung out with my brothers.  Although I am sometimes frustrated by being bored, I do really enjoy having nights with no homework except to study(but, i dont stress about studying for DS's too much since there are other parts to the experience.)

I used Skype for the first time on Thursday. It really is pretty cool that I can be all the way in the north of France and thanks to a free computer application and an internet connection, I can see my mom in the office back home. I know a lot of the other AFS kids have been using skype a lot to communicate back home, but I wanted to wait until I was a little bit more comfortable here. I talked to my mom for a bit about random things, and then Matthis came home. He was fascinated with the webcam and wanted to talk to my mom. So, i ended up playing translator while he and my mom talked about school and his favorite flavors of ice cream. But, because i was still using my french, i didnt have to feel guilty about losing french progress because i was spending time speaking english.

I met another american from Louisiana on Saturday. He is doing the language assistant at a high school program. Basically, it is a program where college aged kids from foreign countries come and live in French high schools. They teach a few language classes at the school and I’m not really sure what else they do. At my school, we have an English assistant and a spanish assistant. My group has classes with Thomas(the spanish assistant) every other friday with just 10 kids. It is cool because we laugh and joke around and everyone(including me) has to participate. Having never taken spanish(except a few years in elementary school where we learned the same 10 things every year) you can imagine that spanish classes are tough. But, I took a stab at reading a paragraph out loud and I dont think it was that bad. And, Im clearly becoming frenchified because when i messed up the spanish pronunciations, it was because i was using french phonetics instead of spanish ones, rather than making mistakes by using english phonetics.

Anyway, back to my encounter with the american guy. We started talking in english but i kept making mistakes. It was like my tongue was fighting against the harsh english sounds. I remember my first “Journée toute en Français”(all day in french) at the alliance Française in sacramento. When i left, my tongue felt like mush and wanted hard english words to chew on. Now my tongue is rebelling against the english sounds. So I talked to the american guy for a bit about how we liked france and all of the typical conversation starters. He would sometimes try to translate for the french girl listening to our conversation. It was nice to hear someone else speaking french with a very obvious american accent and made me feel less self-conscious,(especially because i think my french was better than his.)  But i felt really self-conscious speaking english, like he was going to judge me. And i kept saying things in the french way, like putting my adjectives after the nouns instead of before. Everything i said just felt really awkward and I was sure there was a better way to say it but I couldn’t think of it. Even in english class at school, I have a hard time getting the proper words out.

Remember my amazing chocolate chip cookies from last week? They were so well received that when there was just one left, the boys played rock paper scissors for it. Now that is a nice compliment, especially considering we have a cupboard of store-bought cookies they could have eaten.

I raised my hand and answered a question in SVT the other day. I got the answer right, although it was a very simple question. But it still kind of felt like everyone was saying “Wow! She answered a question.” And when I went to the knitting store today, my friend told the lady I was American so she could help by translating a bit. The lady took that took mean I didn’t speak any french at all. She would talk directly to my friend and when i responded because i had perfectly understood the question, she would say “Wow, you understood.” And when the knitting lady did talk directly to me, she talked really slowly and loudly and got louder each time. By the time I paid and left, she was practically yelling.

My homeroom classroom has some personality now, although it is one of the only rooms in the school with personality. The chem lab has some periodic tables posted around, but no jokes about what makes for a good chemist (writing the report before doing the lab) or bumper stickers about “Honk if you passed P-Chem.” (If you have ever had Mr. Montbriand, you will understand the references. If not, sorry.) My homeroom is also the classroom where the majority of the german classes take place. There are posters with little saying and pictures in german on them, things like “How do you say ... in French/German?” and “Would you open the window, please?” We also have the trophy our class won for being best placed out of the 7 première classes in our classroom. So, now it at least has more personality than a chalk board and some desks surrounded by 4 walls.

I really hate the way math is taught here. There is a specific system that has to be followed and the teacher says things like “You don’t have to know this but I’m required to show it because it is part of the program.” The government sets the standards and the teachers don’t really have any power to do anything differently.

The first trimester ends in a week or two. We have two DS’s next week: 4 hours of french and 2 hours of math. French will not be fun. Last time, i didn’t even understand the text we were analyzing so i really couldn’t respond to the question. I just wrote about the differences in schooling systems and tried to practice my french. i did actually pass a recent french test, though. I got 11 out of 20 on a vocab test, which is not great, really not even good, but it was a pass. But still, i should probably think about another topic to amuse myself with and write about in french during the 4 hours of being trapped in the testing room.

Tuesday was the last day of the ping pong sequence for sport. We move on to basketball for the next section. But unfortunately, we will be stuck taking the french DS so we wont get to have sport next week. Those are some of my favorite 2 hours of the week, so that’s disappointing. But, oh well.

The regional cross is on Wednesday. If I qualify, I will get to go to the national meet. But, I don’t know whether I will qualify. I haven’t been doing much exercise recently so I’m sure I’m even more out of shape than I was for the department meet. We’ll see.

Today I went shopping with a friend after school. It has gotten really cold here, and I needed to buy a coat to keep warm. Luckily I already have a scarf(thanks to Karina) so i fit in perfectly with my scarf wrapped around my neck. I first went to my favorite bakery and got a palmier(elephant ear) to supply me with energy during the exhausting process of shopping. We went to the yarn store next, since I though it was most likely to close first. I got some yarn to start a sweater, my next project once I finish my scarf. Then we went to the book store to buy the book I have to read for French class. I probably won’t understand it, but at least I can try. Maybe later in the year when my french is better, i can try again to read the book. And then we went to look for a coat. it was really frustrating for me. My broad tennis/basketball shoulders made finding a coat that fit almost impossible, and I was starting to get really frustrated. But I finally found a nice wool coat with enough room to put some other layers underneath. And then, to finish the afternoon, I got two amazing café expresso chocolates. It was a pretty fun afternoon, but it got dark so early that I had to come home before I would have wanted to.

Going to town after-school on a friday is like going to Loehmann’s plaza on a Thursday afternoon: you are basically guaranteed to see other people from your school. Walking around town we ran into lots of little groups of other people from our school. It’s like that is what people do on Friday night, they walk around town. And that’ my week. Nothing earth-shattering this week and no pretty pictures. Sorry. I’ll post some pictures of my new coat soon. 

i have my second AFS obligatory weekend coming up, but it's only one day. i think it will just be some more repetitive activities, reminders of the rules, and talking to our support liasons. But, it will be so much fun to get to see my international friends. I love the fact that my chapter doesnt have any other american AFS students so I dont have to worry about cheating my international experience by hanging out with them. I'll let you know how my weekend goes.