Jours Trente, Trente-et-un, Trente Deux, Trente Trois, et Trente Quatre.

Jours trente, trente-et-un, trente deux, trente trois, et trente quatre. 30/9/10, 1/10/10, 2/10/10, 3/10/10, 4/10/10.


“Salut! Ça va? “
“Ça va. Et toi?”
“Ça va.”
I hear those phrases constantly. I say them constantly. The same as English, I suppose:
“Hey! How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
(Or, if you prefer…)
“Yo, sup?”
“Nothin’ man, you?”
“Nothin’.”

Oh yeaaaaaaah, flex those colloquial skillllllsssssssss.

Righto, continuing a quick summation de ma semaine:
Thursday, I ran into Valeria on my way to the meeting about TANDEM. Spoke quickly, hopefully she’ll have internet soon so we can get in touch better. Then I met Katie and we spent a good 20(?) minutes searching for the room where our meeting was being held… We were split randomly into partners, and mine is a nice French girl named Marie-Charlotte. She strikes me as very, very shy, but very sweet. We happen to have our translation courses together. :] We made vague plans to get together on Fridays, and then I headed back to Triolo (ma résidence universitaire), did my laundry, and sat around in my room, I believe. Friday, Christine, Sarah and I went to the school in order to sort out our schedules and sign up for the Language Resource Center. On our way out, we ran into Christine’s friend “Julien” (In fact, his name is Théo, but… :)) Some side information: The French do this thing called “faire la bise”, I believe, if we want to give it a term. Really, it’s just kissing each cheek as a greeting. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, and if not, you’d recognize it. Right so, Théo does this to Christine sans problème, and then Sarah sans problème, and then he gets to me. I think it goes off without a hitch, but then Théo stares at me for a moment before simply remarking, “Tu n’es pas française.” You aren’t French. Awesome. He could tell just by kissing my cheeks? What, are they too big to be French cheeks? In all actuality, I’m sure my eyes probably bugged out and my face went read and I hesitated on which side to go to first in the cheek-kissing and that must’ve tipped him off. Anyway, kept talking, Christine hugged him and he looked scared to death and was as still as a statue, which was kind of hilarious. The French just don’t hug, apparently. We were ending our conversation, and in saying goodbye had to faire la bise once more. Théo does this to Christine sans problème, and then Sarah sans problème, and then he gets to me. The whole time I’ve been telling myself, “Yeah, I’m going to be assertive and confident. I will show him what is UP and I will prove I can be French!” Instead, I found him wrapping his arms around me in this big bear hug. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was really, really sweet of him to hug me when he’d noticed how uncomfortable the kissing makes me, so it really made my day. Also made me extremely embarrassed and awkward, and I’m sure I turned bright red again. I really can’t hold my own against French boys. It’s just not working out.

After saying goodbye to Théo, Sarah, Christine, and I went to Leclerc (like Auchan, but much smaller and happier) to grab some food for lunch at Laura-Georgie-Katie house. We had a great time seeing them and having lunch, and then I went home and did laundry. So that means I didn’t do laundry on Thursday. I went shopping Thursday, sorry to have lied to you all. Friday night, Sarah, Christine, and I packed onto Christine’s bed, watched Sex and the City, drank a bottle of wine, and ate chocolate. Although Sex and the City wasn’t quite my cup of tea (or glass of wine, eh? Eh?) I did enjoy time spent relaxing and joking with one another. And chocolate. (I was also really classy, drinking wine out of my UIowa STAT cup. Yeahhhh.) Went to bed early to prepare for Paris. Yep. Paris.
Woke up at the early hour of 5:30am, rolled out of bed, and met Sarah and Christine in the lobby to walk over to Pont de Bois metro in order to meet the autobus. Just nearly fell asleep on the ride to Paris, and instead talked with Christine a bit. Upon arrival, we drove through parts of the city and made our first stop at La Tour Eiffel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower). It’s huge. No really, it’s gigantic. It reminded me of Rome, and the Coliseum. You see it in pictures, you see it in videos/movies, you study it, but you can never fully grasp the size and impact until you are there next to it. We walked up to le Palais de Chaillot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_de_Chaillot) to take some more pictures. I think my favorite part of that area was actually a ton of national flags, but all in black and white. There are photos, I assure you.
We hopped back onto the bus, having avoided many, many vendors for tiny Eiffel Tower key chains (I didn’t buy any, it bothered me too much to have them thrust at me every 2 minutes), we set off towards la Notre Dame (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_Paris). One of the most awesome cathedrals ever, basically. Sadly, we were only given an hour and a half to explore the area, and thus didn’t enter. (Return trip? Yes.) Instead, Rosalind, Raashnie and I went over to the Quasimodo Café for sandwiches and fries with ketchup and mayonnaise (miammiammmm). Four ladies entered and sat at the table next to us. After one of them asked us where the quiche was on the menu, we got to talking. They were happy to hear Raashnie and I were from Pennsylvania, as they were all from New Jersey and on a tour group trip all over France. I grabbed some post cards and other sketches as souvenirs on our way back to the tour bus, and we were off again!
We arrived at Place de la Concorde (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_De_La_Concorde) around 2 in the afternoon. There are two fountains and a huge obelisk, with really beautiful gold features on them all. Once you get to the center of the plaza, you can go down one path to le Louvre, or the opposite path to l’Arc de Triomphe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe). We wandered through the Jardin des Tuileries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardin_des_Tuileries), which happened to be hosting a modeling/fashionshowing/thingy with scarily thin models in just as scary shoes, all the way up to the Louvre. We were stopped by a man from Cameroon who roped us into buying far too expensive bracelets. He told us “A sexy price for sexy ladies..” (5€ is not a sexy price in my books, but at least he was trying?). He also kept asking us if we knew about the “chicky chicky boom boom”. I was sure to tell him I absolutely knew it, for sure. Anyway, Sarah, Christine and I now have matching bracelets, and it’s a good memory to keep, in any case. It was difficult for me to really look at the Louvre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre) , as well. It was a palace. People lived there for a very long time. I can’t even fathom buildings like that regularly, let alone as a place of residence. Awesome, in any case. We headed back to the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs-Elysées (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champs-%C3%89lys%C3%A9es), inspiration for my most favorite French song ever (link will appear at the end of the post). We passed by the Grand Palais (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Palais) which has an… impressive statue of Charles de Gaulle in the front of the building.
Final stop? Montmartre. We were also very, very short on time here, so we scrambled to find the Sacré-Cœur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilique_du_Sacr%C3%A9-C%C5%93ur,_Paris). I don’t know why we had problems finding it, because it’s the highest point in Paris and we were clearly going uphill… (The stairs were brutal, I will admit.) Making it up there was entirely, completely worth it though. Awe-struck. We didn’t get very close, and we only stayed a few minutes, to take some quick pictures, but let me tell you, the pictures do not do it justice, and neither do my words. I suggest you go visit it now. Immediately.

The five of us (Raashnie, Sarah, Rosalind, Christine, and I) made our way back down the steps to find a restaurant. We found one. I forget it’s name. It was small, service was slow, and we ended up receiving our main course 4 minutes before we had to meet at the bus to go home. Definitely were a lovely representation of the American people, shoving food down our throats as fast as possible, stuffing things in napkins, and running out the door. Bus trip home was uneventful, I think I fell asleep for a while, and we were home by 11?

Overall, the trip was good for a first time. Paris is huge and overwhelming with so much to see and do, I’m very sure had I gone by myself for my first trip there, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do. It was busy, a little stressful, and mainly a “hey, I went to this monument!” trip, but still a good foundation. Plus, it was spent with my friends, and we took loads of pictures and had a great time together, so it was definitely worth the 33€ fee, and the 30€ or so I spent on meals and souvenirs. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go meet Ludovic or to see Rosie because of the time constraints. Fortunately, I’ll be going back to Paris at some point and will be forcing Ludo to be my guide, and I am almost ready to confirm my ticket purchase to go to London (and maybe Oxford and Farnham) in November, where I can see Rosie. :]

I slept in on Sunday, did some homework, spoke to my parents via skype, had dinner with a really nice French girl named Matilda, and dreaded going to school today. My DEFI class seemed worse than usual, complete with labo time to make me feel entirely inadequate and incompetent. I did, however, manage to see Katie, Georgie, Laura, and Stephanie for the first time in what felt like ages. I came home, exercised, showered, made some potatoes and topped it with a mushroom sauce I came across last week. I turned in my schedule to the International Relations office before going to Farsi. I believe I wrote about having an extra 12 people show up to the class last week. This week, we were back down to 6 total. I don’t understand… The class isn’t too hard, but I should probably actually commit the vocabulary we’ve learned to memory at some point.. Arabic, however, was just as difficult as it has been, and some French girl wanted to copy my notes from the previous class period. She had about 50 questions because my handwriting in Arabic and my note-taking in French are clearly sub-par, so it was a bit frustrating. I wanted to be nice though. Sarah has decided not to continue on with level 2 Arabic, so I’m all alone. He had us do a translation of our text from Arabic to French today. Hello, panic! I was sure to ask if I could pleaaaase do it from Arabic to English (which really wasn’t much better…), and he was completely okay with it. After class, I walked home in some really nice weather, the absolute perfect temperature. I made an egg with cheese and a slice of chicken, telling Khalid about the American economy and average incomes and military spending. (Can you blame the man for wanting to know?)

I briefly mentioned the nanny-opportunity on here before, I believe, so as an update, I am in fact going to the house of the couple to meet them, talk out some specifics about finances, travel, duties, expectations, etc, etc. Malheureusement, this will be happening immediately after my translation courses tomorrow, so it’ll be a long, stressful day.

This update feels rushed and not as involved as the previous ones, and I apologize. It has been rushed. I haven’t really felt emotionally connected to most of it. More apologies. This post also has no pictures. I am far too lazy to go add them in, and there are far too many to sort through them. I’ll try and update tomorrow with pictures of Paris, so I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. I’m such a guilty person, apologizing all over the place.

Joe Dassin will cheer you up for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAMuNfs89yE

Jours vingt-huit et vingt-neuf.

Jours vingt-huit et vingt-neuf. 28/9/10 et 29/9/10.

Bonjour à tous. Toutes? Tout? Je ne sais pas… I usually find the agreement/non-agreement rules for “all” to be really confusing..

Hoping to keep this quite brief. We’ll see if it actually happens.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. I went to my Histoire de la Langue Française class in the morning. Here’s a note for you non-French: classes do not start on time. In fact, I think it would be a pretty rare situation to have a professor show up on time, rather than 5-10 minutes late. That’s usually the case for my courses anyway, so maybe I’m just learning for some professors tardifs. The class really doesn’t seem too bad at all, until the professor asks us to come up with the 6 homophones that have the sound [SƐN]. Right, I can do that, because I can speak French and everything... Unimportant, she goes over all the answers anyway. Onward to the most embarrassing and awkward encounter I’ve had so far in France…

History of the French language ends by 1pm. I have my two translation courses at 1:30-3 and 3-4:30. Too short of a time to do much of anything, so instead I wandered to a generally open area and found a bench. A very cute French boy sat next to me. I definitely recognized him. We kept glancing at each other strangely. I sat there for 10 minutes, trying to convince myself I should just say something because I was positive he was in my translation courses, he was just so familiar. 10 minutes, I told myself I might as well go for it because if I didn’t, it’d be pretty awkward to walk to class next to each other after having sat there in silence for all that time, and also because it’s France. Where better to try new things, like being outgoing? (Haha. Ha.)

“Pardon, mais, est-ce que tu as des cours traduction?”

“….Non..”

PANIC.

Yeah, I tried to explain how he resembled someone I knew, that I thought he was in my class, he really seemed familiar. In French. I think I failed pretty hard. I tried to excuse myself and say I was sorry, but I’m not very good with speaking French. So he asked what language I spoke.

“Anglais.”

“Ay speek een-gleesh.”

ADORABLE. So then I tried to quickly re-explain in English that I had thought he was in my classes, etc, etc. Then he tried to introduce himself.

“Je m’appelle aowuehvoauwe.”

“Pardon?”

“awecoahwet.”

“…quoi?”

“…awoureghofauwe.”

“Euhh, comment ca s’écrit?”

“Koo. Oo. Euh. En. Tay. Ee. En.”

“………………………………………………………….”

Finally, my dear readers, it clicked.

“Ohhh, comme ‘Quentin’ en anglais?”

“Oui.”

In my defense, he had been speaking with his hand covering his mouth the whole time. Plus, just in case you’ve never studied French … the pronunciation of “Quentin” in French and in English are very, very different.

We talked very briefly about what year we were in, with me stuttering all over the place and looking like a tomato. He asked if I had a course right now, and I glanced down at my watch: It was 1:25 and I was not entirely sure I could make it back to the room for my translation classes without getting lost. (More on that in a few sentences…) I tried to tell him that I had class at 1:30, but couldn’t remember the hour in 24-hour time, let alone in French, so I panicked and told him in the USA we just call it “one”. He kind of nodded and then I said I had to go and I thanked him profusely for having talked to me. Then I turn and practically ran away. Smoooooooth.

Really, though, in retrospect, all I can do is laugh at the entire experience. Very embarrassing, very awkward, very funny. He certainly was extremely nice to have sat there on the bench and talked with me (and tolerated my terrible French stuttering and mumbling and mistakes) when he could have just said “non” and turned the other way, or even left. Despite my absolute positivity that I recognized him from somewhere (which was apparently false), I’m really hoping I’m just crazy and I didn’t recognize him; if I run into him again, I think I might crawl under a rock and die.

Yes, yes, off I went to my translation courses. Close to them, at least. I got lost and panicky. The buildings here are ridiculously confusing and have completely illogically numbered rooms. Not cool, Lille 3 administration… I made it to class just in time, but then again, why had I worried? Most of the students were there, but the teacher didn’t arrive until several minutes after I had. Both classes weren’t too exciting but not terribly boring either. Ended up with a massive headache at the end, however.

Oh indeed, I’m sick. Ill. Headcold. Nose keeps changing from runny to stuffy every few hours and I’ve had a few headaches. Nothing unbearable, but it makes me angry to be sick. I was moping in my room about my illness when Cindy knocked on the door to ask me to show her the laundry room. I happily obliged, after jokingly blaming me for my nose and headache (“Erasmuflu”, as Vikki called it. It’s certainly nothing abnormal, probably just being around so many new people and exchanging germs, etc, etc, just as happens every school year.) In the laundry room, we found Laurent, a boy from York in England who studies at Lille I. We spent some time talking to him. I had to struggle not to laugh aloud when he said to “go past the car park and cross the motorway”, though.

Can’t remember anything else from the rest of the evening. Woke up and went to my Diachronie de l’anglais class. So awesome. Really love it. Basically a history of the English language. Everyone who lived in Britain until the modern-day English really sucked at defending themselves. Basically asked to be invaded. Really. They did. The Celts who were there around 500AD invited in the Angles and Saxons on into the country to defend them since they were so wimpy, but apparently hadn’t considered the possibility of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes wanting to just take over the entire landmass and purge the whole area of Celts… Right, but English is super cool and so is its history! BAM!

Wandered back to my room, feeling rather congested, and then met up with Rosalind. We went to this nice little café with grey and purple walls and had almond flavored bubble tea and these ham+mushroom+some-sort-of-spread sandwiches. Luckily for Rosalind, she only had to say “la même chose” after the waiter tried (unsuccessfully) to hide his smile as I ordered in French. Overall, satisfying lunch and bubble tea is neat. We grabbed our bank cards at the bank, just afterwards sadly realizing we haven’t received our stipends so our accounts are completely empty. We stopped at the post office so I could mail a thank-you out to one of my friends and so Rosalind could send some postcards. Then we hit the Tabac so I could try and buy a timbre fiscale for my immigration stuff, but they didn’t appear to have any. Thought about getting metro passes on the way home, but it was more than a bit crowded, so we left.

Crashed in my room. Had an omelette for dinner, nomnomnom. Plans to go to a meeting about Tandem, the conversational partner course, register in the CRL, and maybe stop by the Katie-Georgie-Laura residence, because Georgie invited me over for some soup. I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow or Friday. We’ll see what I feel like doing. Ulysse trip to Paris on Saturday. Hoping I’ll be over this cold by then.

I think that’s everything. Tout. Tous. Toutes? Tout. It must be tout, right? Ahhh, well…

Oh, and so. Today is Wednesday, September 29, 2010. I arrived in Lille exactly 4 full weeks ago. It feels like it’s been forever. It feels comfortable and routine and normal, generally. It feels like home.

Bonne nuit. <3