First, it was my host mother's birthday this week. That's cool, right? Right! It's so cool that I took a mental note that she likes to paint, went to the Monoprix after school, and bought her two packs of paintbrushes. "Aw, that's nice," right? No! Wrong! First of all, the Monoprix is a hard concept to explain... it's like... A clothes store/bakery/convenience store/grocery store/etc. all in one. Still somewhat classy, and far better than something like Walmart. You're just going to have to look it up if you don't already know. So anyway, my thought was just to get the presents as a nice gesture. Silly me, though, didn't notice that the packages say Monoprix on them (which is as good as saying I bought some paintbrushes that say Safeway on them). Not only that, they're made from poney, or to you, pony. And yes, she did point this out to her visiting friend, saying "I've never used pony before." Ugh. Verklempt.
Continuing on the birthday note, we had a little birthday late lunch/dinner for her today. At the table was Marie Emmanuelle, Sylvain, Sylvain's girlfriend Marion, the middle son Clément (who's quite nice - like the rest of the family - and offered to show me cool things in town this week), myself, and Fréd. This meal seemed very Dauphinois (the region of France in which I'm staying) as it was of sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes, ham, and a hotdog sausage thing. That's perfectly fine, if not filling, and afterwards Fréd brought out the dessert. This was a golden brown spongey looking cake with cream and fruit in the middle. The cake itself looked to be glazed with honey. Was it? No. The cake was in fact Rum Baba. Everything about it was delicious besides the cake being saturated in rum. If I'd have known I wouldn't be so verklempt, but honestly, when you expect honey and instead get rum it's quite the unpleasant hoodwink! Needless to say, I payed close attention to how I rationed my cream so that it would cover the rum taste. My mouth still watered like I was going to vom though. Eventually somebody offered to fill my water glass. Also! Funny thing (hardy har har): after Marie Emmanuelle and Marion were served, Fréd asked who should be served next and Marie said "le plus petit," which everyone took as "the smallest one," so naturally Fréd was about to put the piece of cake on my plate, but she started laughing and Sylvain lifted his plate as he is the youngest (which was what was originally meant). At the same time, she said guests are served first and that that wouldn't be me as I'm part of the family! Awww. Good verklempt!
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| We shouldn't travel in such a big group... |
Classes. Oy, classes. Let me just say, humbly, that in the states I'm usually one of the top in my French class. Well! Number one, I'm a tad rusty still from the summer, and number two, I learned that my level of writing needs drastic improvement. Apparently. Also, I'm getting verklempt because what if I've reached the stasis of language learning and I don't improve so much? Linguists know that the younger you are (meaning before puberty) the easier it is to pick up a language, which is probably why I did so well with French in the first place because I bloomed late. However, what if my brain's reached the point where it doesn't pick things up as easily? Says the kid who'll probably be fluent by the time May rolls around. Verklempt. We're placed into levels here and originally I was in B1.7 but on Monday I start B1.8 because I got moved up. Apparently that's considered advanced at the CUEF, but I believe it's just the top of the intermediate. Advanced to me starts at B2.0 (which would be the next level after B1.8). I get to switch again... next semester, I think? I don't know if there's another switch period any time soon.
On those notes I'm verklempt because WWU has to evaluate my work when I get back and they ask that I'm in advanced classes. So really there's no way to tell if things are going to work out the way they should until I get back so I'm just going to forget about it. Also! Because I'm not in B2.0 I get to keep the same Vocabulary class which is great because number one, I like the teacher, and number two, as far as I've seen (class has only been held once so far) it has a linguistic aspect about it so I feel pretty smart for knowing a bunch of things. Maybe I can use that class for credit for my minor. And! If I took all the classes I thought I'd be taking I'd be over the maximum credits per semester for Western so I: don't have to take this history of film class, and can take Society and Culture instead which is what I wanted. Hopefully it won't matter that I've missed two classes. It's a lecture anyway so I don't think it will be such a big deal.
Last thing: Frédéric took me to a museum after Marie's lunch/dinner that's five minutes from my house and I absolutely loved it. It has really nice gardens to walk around in, and the paintings inside are quite nice. I'm going to go back for a while until it gets too cold. Maybe I'll do my homework there, or just people watch if I can. I've yet to do much of that. Let me just link that museum here. And! I'll go back and take pictures, but! But! This museum used to be a house and there's a showcase of a living room with furniture, and I kid you absolutely not, the chairs and couch had the same material as my yellow chair at home. I inhaled sharply when I saw it, and I swear my neck stretched out as I lingered looking at it as we walked into the next room.
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