A Confusingly Snowy Day

am I in Pittsburgh again?!

Well, it wasn't a nice morning, but it wasn't a bad morning. It was cold and snowy to start off with, which was ridiculous considering 1) it's the south of France and 2) it's actually warmer in Pittsburgh right now. Sigh. That snow up there is what I woke up to this morning. Then right before I left the house I realized that on Tuesday I start at 10:30, not 9. Thus, I was 1.5 hours early because I thought it was Monday. But I decided to head to school to work on my paper anyways. Which, it turns out was a good decision, because I walked the wrong way for the first 7 minutes. So then I turned around and headed to school the right way at last. When I got to school I went down to the cave--which is the basement/lounge with vending machines, huzah! They're cheaper than the stores and have Evian (!), Orangina (delicious), and Snickers (my savior). As well as a hot beverage vending machine, I'm so excited to try that out. It's the little things in life.

Today I had three classes. First advanced french conversation and composition or something. Essentially a writing, speaking, and some grammar class. The teacher seems very nice and hopefully it'll go well. I feel like my level of french is appropriate for the class but I felt bad for the kids who seemed a little lost. Luckily CMU prepared me well. (shout out to the french department!) Second was the French Honors Program seminar, a weekly one hour class to discuss our progress in french and how classes are going, things like that. We also finally signed our contract to speak only in french the entire semester! Which means french to all my teachers, administrative people, classmates, french family, people in town, etc. Except if there is a student who can't understand enough french to understand me, then I can speak in english. Thus, it's okay to write in english on here, because not all of you can understand french. :) Lastly, was my french literature class, where I discovered I will be reading 13 poems, 4 bits of fiction, and 3 bits of theater. To which I heave a sigh, because poetry is not my cup of tea. But I'm trying to keep an open mind because I want to do well in that class. It's funny, because that teacher is also the teacher of the phonetics class and he is very much into linguistics/ phonetics. He corrected our pronunciation mistakes and then taught us small intensive lessons about the difference between /s/ and /ss/ in french and whether they're voiced or voiceless consonants. It was pretty cool but a little intimidating. I'm just glad I understand french as much as I do. A few girls in my class looked like they were in way over their heads. Ooh, and for lunch today I went to the bio (organic food store) and got corn cakes (like rice cakes, only made of corn) and some cheese and called it lunch, so tasty. Oh and candy obviously.

Now on to notes for today. First comes my inability to keep changing languages. Recently, when I've been writing in english, I forget how to spell an english word and can only remember the french word. My grammar structure sometimes looks awkward because it's more like a french translation into english. Which is so weird for me, because english is my native language and should come more easily to me obviously! For example, I typed out 'dramatique' today and was confused for a few beats why spell check was trying to correct me. Then I realized it was french, not english. That's annoying. I'm trying to write a ten page paper in english for the J Term and my brain keeps getting confused.

And the weather. It's freezing cold. I severely underestimated how cold it would truly be. I had to close my outside window shutters, got an extra blanket, wore many many layers today, and am still cold. In fact, it's 30 degrees F colder than usual in AeP right now. It's supposed to be 50, it's about 30 right now. Tomorrow is staying around 30, but Friday drops to 20 and snow. Again. Gross. Take pity on me... speed FedEx me sweaters and woolen socks!

look at this nonsense!

Enfin, two little things about my host family life. Normally, I don't like olives.  In fact I kind of hate them. But I never told them this, because back home, olives don't show up much. However, they keep showing up in my food in inconvenient places, like sauce. It's hard and kind of rude to pick olives out of the tomato sauce, so I've just been eating them. And the more I eat them, the less they taste repulsive. I'm afraid that by the end of this I'm going to end up liking olives. Gulp. Ooh and today for part of dinner I had a cooked artichoke, typical of the Breton region. It was quite tasty. Because uncooked small purple artichokes are more typical of AeP. I do like those, but I prefer my cooked artichokes. And lastly, today I got home from school and what was in my room? A garbage can! Or rather, a wicker basket. That I'm assuming is a garbage can. Hmm. 

I'm gonna call it the garbage

Sadly, as the day wore on the snow became rain slushy mess nonsense and hopefully it's not too icy when I attempt my walk to school tomorrow morning! Snowy Aix is yucky, but much prettier than rain and gross snow Aix!

rain and gross snow Aix