There is a new woman staying at my house who is crazy. She is from alaska and she like can hardly speak any french at all so she speaks SO SLOWLY. I though it was just her french but then I heard her speak english and I guess that is just how she talks. My host mom told me she was around 30 but I think she is more like 50 because she has a 30 year old daughter and is going to be a grandmother in august. She is super awkward and in some ways kind of creepy. She like invited me into her room to look at pictures of her family but then insisted on speaking french so it took like 45 minutes. At dinner though we keep like having to break into english though, or like the host mom will talk to her and everyone else will like talk over her and around her and it made me like, so happy because I was at least more with it then her. Even though I asked what a word meant tonight and the sister was like we already explained that tonight, and like laughed. I think though overall it has made my host family appreciate more how like bad my french COULD be, and as a result I am now facebook friends with my host brother! So I was feeling really good about my french but then this happened:
I was really hungry because I hadn't had time to eat breakfast since I woke up 45 minutes before my class started. We have a short break at school so I went down to the cafeteria to buy a snack. I told the lady I wanted an "anana" and some yogurt. I told her over and over because she didn't understand me because yogurt is really hard to pronounce, but really she had no idea what fruit i wanted so I finally just like reached over and grabbed it. And she goes "OOOOHHHHH, Banane." Evidently ananas does not mean banana, it means pineapple, and I was like demanding one from this poor woman while like pointing at a banana.
Combined with how impossibly difficult my french homework is I am feeling pretty lame in the french department today. My french father is really cool though, he always like wants to talk politics and I think he slows down his speech some but not as much as his wife. The brother on the other hand I can hardly understand at all, and I think he does that on purpose. Anyway, the dad was telling this story about how someone at work had a picture of his wife on his desktop of his work computer. My host father was like appalled, he said that was too private and couldn't believe that his coworker would do that. He said that one of the younger guys, even had a picture of him and his GIRLFRIEND up there. Oh, my, word.
My knitting group though, was fantastic. Most of the other people there are american, canadian, belgian, swiss, and there are a couple of french people. There are a lot of like girls about my age who have moved here because they married french men. A guy who was there talked like in depthly about the process of PACS-ing (like becoming legal partners essentially, you can enter into a contract to have the same rights except reproductively as married couples whether you are homosexual or heterosexual) becuase he and his partner are getting pacsed so their taxes are less. It was really interesting. Everyone is VERY good, and I stayed for almost 3 hours. I knitted so much I ran out of pattern that I had with me but I guess and I did it exactly right, it was great. Not I picked up and knit around the collar, I am working on that now, the ribbing. I need to find someplace that sells buttons though. Also, I have never knitted button holes before and I don't quite know how it is going to work. I guess I can ask on wednesday. When I came home though, I had asked my mom here to make me a plate and put it in the fridge but instead she just left all of dinner on the table, just out. I was so confused. I like put it all away after but I don't know where anything goes because she never lets me do anything (like COOK for example) so I hope I did it right. I felt really bad. She said its no big deal though and she can do it all the wednesdays, so who knows.
Today on the metro a little girl started petting my hair (I think we are the only two people in paris who have pink coats, and she was 2 and a half). So I started like peeking at her and then I was like in english, you are so cute! can I keep you? And her dad turned around and in english was like "NO!" She was really adorable though, but didn't want to speak french with me either :(. Being here makes me really want a puppy too because all the homeless people have dogs. I guess if you have a dog you can't be taken to jail because there is nothing to do with the dog so thats why they all have them. Daffy the jaques russelle as they called him came over to play yesterday too. He wanted to play with my KNITTING though and that wasn't going to fly. It's funny, they tell him to s'assoir himself instead of to sit. I mean, that means to sit, but it just seems long, and like really hard for a dog.
That reminds me about how sick I am about my french homework though. Seriously. It is impossible. I am posting some more pics after this, please note the HEATED TOWEL RACKS and remember the kids built it like entirely themselves pretty much.
I am still super stressed out about travel plans for me and John though. I feel like I need to reserve trains and hostels pretty soon so we can sit together and such, but I can't without the railpasses I don't think. Beth has me thinking that maybe it makes more sense just to stay in paris and normandy, but I think John wants to go to the places I want to as well. Or at least he doesn't want to stay in Paris the whole time and I feel like by shortening the trip all we lose are the places we want to see most, so I don't know what to do. I wish that my friends didn't want to go out like every single night all weekend so that I could get things done and not be so stressed out during the week. Or at least not stay out until 5. I just want to like, get up at a reasonable time and not be exhausted all day, and be able to run and LIFT when I want to. And not have to eat carbs for like every meal, or possibly know what is in the food I am eating. I just feel really old. This weekend we met this girl who was hanging out with these guys we had met up with and she was like how old are you? And I was like 21, and she was like "oh I didn't realize you were older." lol. She was 18. She was born in 1991. unbelievable.
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