First of all... I would like to give out a shout out to Eva Pleuhs and thank her for sharing her lemon cake recipe with the world on her blog "Fresh from Eva's Kitchen." This is the best cake I've ever had. Danke!!
My day started awful. The badness started yesterday when I wanted to do my laundry. Something tells me this will be a constant struggle between me and the mother. She said I couldn't because she was doing some. Woman, I've been waiting all week and it seems as if you are always doing laundry. And I am running out of "sous-vetements" AHEM. Donc, I need to do laundry now. But no, and then, the machine broke. Joy. So, I put my white clothes next to the door to claim my territory. If laundry gets done, it better be mine. And the angel did my whites for me! This morning, I dragged my colors down from the room, remember no laundry basket?... and had my breakfast (I bought myself good old Quaker Oats oatmeal the other day... heaven in a box). The dad came downstairs and I said my hellos, and headed back up. And there, on the stairs, was a pair of bright pink underwear. I grabbed it quick and ran to my room. And we all know the dad saw them, and I said hi, thinking everything was normal in the household. Horror.
I started out DREADING leaving the house because I had four straight hours of class this morning. Pointless classes, for example, today I learned how to take notes in french using a "mind map" (don't get me started). And then in the caf, the stupid woman was SO RUDE to me. So I paid in little coins, sucker. And then I had to go to two hours of service learning... oh jesus. BUT.....
It was great! I went to the Center of Service Learning to help French students with their english and finally, after one month of being in France, I remembered that yes, I am a competent, intelligent human being! It's so nice to remember that!!! I feel so much better knowing that my inability and frustration with communicating is because I'm always trying to communicate in French! I can feel everyone saying duh, but you have no idea the difference this makes when you figure it out. These French students have the same silly frustrations in English that I have been having in French!
I had the best time being the teacher, rather than the student.
I helped two French students, one with the "h" sound, and one with the rhythm of sentences. We all worked together because there were so many French students to help and only two Americans there. And the students were really happy to be working, silly me, I was afraid they would be rude, given what I'd seen in class. But anytime they started going off in french really quick, I would just make them say something hard and we would laugh about it and move on. Ha. They joked around with me saying "You're a real American, not a martian!" (Ok?) But I had a great time. Anyway, after they left, I helped a French professor with his English. He didn't know much English at all, and we sat in another room because some of his students were there and he didn't want them to hear him try to learn. He said Thursdays were his days to learn English. We tried to just have a conversation, rather than work on exercises. I helped him with the days of the week and we talked about Universities in the US. He has a colleague at the University of Chicago, which I thought was cool.
Tomorrow is Friday and I'm going to go to some Chateaux this weekend which I am really excited for because its going to be 50 degrees and sunny!
Gonna go unpack my bikini!
(jk)
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