This morning started out with me taking the bus. Fun fact about taking the bus, before you can officially "take it" you have to be on it. In order to be on it, you have to be at the bus stop at the exact moment that the bus arrives. To make this happen sometimes cardio is involved. Picture this: Little Candice walking to the bus stop, when suddenly, in the distance, she spots it. The bus. Moving towards her full speed ahead. The only problem? She is not yet at the bus stop, in fact, she still has a street to cross. Natural instincts kick in and she runs. Oh how she runs. When she gets to the street she thinks about running across it even though the traffic isn't stopped. "If I time it just right, I can slip through" she thinks. Then she thinks, "Wait a second, I enjoy living. I will wait." At this point to bus is stopped at the bus stop and I am still on the other side of the street. I look at the bus then the car approaching hoping then can read the my body language. It goes unnoticed. A second car comes and this man stops and let's me go! Freedom!! I run as fast as my feet will carry me in beat up converse and make it to the bus as the last person from the stop is entering the door. I throw myself in the bus doorway as the doors starts to shut. Victory. Of course I then had to endure every single human being staring at me and smiling, but you know what? I made it to class on time. All worth it.
First class of the day was alright. It is a writing practice course, which is great and very needed but the teacher speaks at a mile a minute and will look you dead in the eyes and says "Do you understand?" and hold her gaze until you either say "Yes" with confidence immediately after her question or else you are busted. If I don't understand, she will proceed to explain it again but even faster and it is the worst thing ever...because then she asks you again "Do you understand?" and if you say no, she looks at you like "Why not?", but if you say "Yes" then you are missing out on course material. Constant dilemma. Don't get my wrong, she is a very nice lady she just talks too fast for me. But I think I will get use to it as time goes on. After class was lunch.
Lunch was the usual. We went to the local mini-market and bought some food then hung out on the amphitheater steps and ate.
My second class of the day is a written communications course with a really great professor. He is incredibly nice and speaks at a steady pace. Not too fast, not too slow. I feel as if I learned a lot in that one class.
My third class of the day was a grammar course which I loved!! I love learning French grammar. It is super nerdy, I know, but I can't get enough of it. I think it is so useful and interesting and sophisticated. Ah! Love it.
After class, I went home and ran and cooked a gourmet dinner including every veggie under the sun.
Wednesday:
Today I made the bus in flawless fashion. My first class was a theatre class. Here we played charades. We were given common french terms and phrases to act out. It was really fun but somehow I became the person that people went to if they didn't know a certain word and while that is flattering, I don't know what made people think I was the lady for the job! Half the words no one in the class had heard of before so the teacher ended up having to tell us the words in the hallway then we would go back into the class and act it out. It was a lot of fun and we all ended up laughing most of the time. I like laughing so I like this class! Plus, I learned useful phrases which is always good.
After class I had a 3 hour break so I went home to relax for 2 and 1/2 of those hours. When I got home I saw that the newspaper article I was interviewed for was online!! And who made the article photo? Well none other than my American friend Lyndsie and two of my German girl friends! Very exciting.
My last class of the day was a phonetics class which was awesome. I feel like a phonetics class is pretty self-explanatory... but I will explain anyways! (I like the sound of my keyboard) The professor helped us with the pronunciation of letters, certain sounds that certain letters make when paired with one another, how the accents change the sound of verbs, etc. I found this class to be extremely useful because speaking is the hardest aspect of French for me at the moment. I am hoping by the end of this year, it is my strongest.
After class I road the 10 bus to Churchill with Hunter. He got off to take the bus back to the dorms and I got on a different bus to tackle the task that is picking up a package. I was able to use French the entire time when talking to two separate people at the post office!! It felt good. I got my package and had to walk to the nearest bus stop for my bus which was about half a mile away. The guy at the post office even looked and the package then looked and me and said "Do you need help?" and at this point I was so elated that I was able to understand everything he was saying I said "No thank you!" and went on my marry way. Fortunate for me, the package was big but not heavy so walking with it wasn't an issue. I got to the bus stop and waited. As the bus approached me I could see that everyone was packed in there like sardines but I really didn't want to walk home, so I shoved myself and my package into the bus. Because it was so crowed I ended up standing in the bus door entrance next to the driver. He was a nice guy.
When I got home I was SO EXCITED! 1. I finally had a comforter (I had only had a little blanket up to this point) 2. I finally had a pillow from home! (I had been using a pair of sweatpants for the first week then went to the store and bought a crappy 9 euro pillow to use for the other weeks) 3. I had a blender. This magic bullet blender was given to me on loan courtesy of Michael's wonderful mother. I was so excited to use the blender that I immediately started went to make a smoothie. I plugged in the blender, started to blend it and it made this really funny sound. So I stopped. Something began to smell like burning. When I removed the cup from the motor a punch of smoke followed and I thought to myself. "I am going to set off the smoke alarms!" I ran to my window and opened them and but the magic bullet on the ledge outside my window. Then I grabbed a folder and tried to push the smokey air out of my window. Even as I was doing this I thought to myself how ridiculous I must have looked. But practically everything I own in in this dorm room and if it goes, I am dead. So I folder-ed away! But no worries guys, it was a success.
After that little affair I went downstairs to try to get my student card registered so that I could pay for my rent online. The lady at the register was really nice. I feel like I am redundant because I say everyone is nice, but they truly are! I have not run into a jerk yet! After getting my card register, I went to the store with Lyndsie and got a rewards card to save money! Whoop whoop. While doing this we met Martin, a very nice security guard from England who is retired British Army. He decided that he wanted to move to France after his retirement 15 years ago and plans to stay here his whole life! I can't blame him. France is wonderful and Limoges is the kind of place that you would want to raise a family or live out your life in peace.
After the store, Lyndsie and I went running then I went home and made myself dinner, put my comforter on my bed and my new, wonderful extra pillow. I now have everything I could possibly need...except new shoes (mine won't make it through the winter)...and Michael...and a puppy(or kitten)...and a prolific understanding of the French language. It's all a work in process.
Thursday:
I don't know why but my oral comprehension class today was a struggle for me. My language class after went well but that comprehension class...felt like an idiot the whole time.
But now that my first week of academic course work is over I will say that I do feel like I have learned something new in every class thus far. I look forward to going to class everyday and I am a little bummed once it's over. I take these as good signs! I've decided that I am going to join a club or sports team or two to stay active as well as work on my French skills outside of the classroom.
After class I waited for the bus but realized that I had read the schedule wrong and that the bus wasn't going to be at the stop for another 30 minutes. It takes me about 25 minutes to walk home, so I walked instead. It started raining and I made the observation that no one wears raincoats here. Everyone has an umbrella. I have an umbrella (shout out to my mom!! You da best.) but I had only worn my raincoat to school that day.
Once home I asked Lyndsie if I could use her adapter to try out the blender again. It did work for a brief moment! But then it started smoking again. I don't know if I broke it the first time I used it or it was already kind of broken. Either way, I owe Michael's mom a new Magic Bullet.
The rest of the day was like the rest, ran, worked out and made dinner.
Friday:
I don't have class on Friday. In fact, I don't know a single student who does. I like the way the French think. (We also have an hour and a half lunch break everyday and a holiday vacation practically every month).
But this morning I still woke up at 8:30 because I had an interview/talk with the CEO of Hull Speed Associates Mr. William Hite. I think it went great! Mr. Hite is very easy to talk to and down to earth. It was a casual conversation but we discussed things that actually mattered in life not just the average interview question. If you are an accounting major and interested in working in Germany or Boston, I suggest you send him an email because his company seems like a great one to work for.
Around 2 Hannah, Lyndsie and I headed into town to find this 2 euro store. We found it, and it is glorious! It actually had really useful cooking tools, little bathroom rugs, cut decorations, shampoo & conditioner etc. I bought a cooking knife, a rug and some disinfectant wipes. After that we went to a book store to buy our friend a birthday gift. She is a huge baker/chef so we got her a fun recipe book and cute mugs. In the mugs we are going to put herbs to go along with the cooking theme. Hopefully she likes it! Hannah and Lynside got lunch at this really cute Cambodian restaurant, but they didn't have a non-meat option so I sat there like a weirdo and watched them eat. ;)
We also stopped into a fancy cooking supply store, which was beautiful and had the coolest things but was crazy expensive. We also stopped into some boutiques and at one boutique in particular met this really nice woman and we ended up having a full out conversation with her. I love the people of Limgoes! Then we went into a chocolate shop, a cheese shop and finally a macaroon shop. There Lynsdie and Hannah bought macaroons, then we went across the street to that they could enjoy some coffee with their macaroons because we are basically French. Then we went to this restaurant called WOKWAY and oh my goodness was it delicious and reasonably priced! I will have to go back sometime this week.
We walked home and that was that! It was a really fun day. Not only do I love the people of Limoges, but I love the people that I am experiencing Limoges with.
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