Week 5: La Tempête

La tempête: the windstorm, gale, or just ordinary storm. Of course the tempest takes a feminine article- French is such a misogynist language. (just kidding... kinda)

So my university is still up in arms about the education reforms. I hope I can get some pictures of all the signs up, etc. Classes are canceled more often than not, but we still need to go and check every day- I guess shooting an email out to your class would be too difficult for some profs. At the same time, France has been dealing with another tempête. This time though, we were allowed to go outside, it just wasn't encouraged. The wind is so strong the rain is basically falling horizontally and it's very hard to stay dry. What a crazy time for me to have come to France!

Even though things here are pretty crazy, I'm still very glad that I came and very psyched to be here. Even la grippe, which in my humble opinion was bronchitis, can't keep me down! My listening comprehension skills are improving, I think, though I still catch myself saying totally grammatically incorrect things. At least I catch myself now! I'm so lucky to have a host family who don't laugh at the ridiculous way I sometimes speak. I need to talk more, but I am still very shy about talking in French- I really hate sounding stupid. And even though they try not to, I think people still stereotype people who speak with incorrect grammar as uninformed or not as smart as someone who speaks correctly.

So my weekend was pretty quiet- I had fun at my host sister's birthday party. I organized a treasure hunt with her older sister (that's right- in French) which turned out well, I think. Except that when I asked Léonie if she liked her treasure hunt she said, "Yes, but it was a little too easy," after having cried all morning that we were making it too difficult and she wanted it to be very easy. What can you do? I took a few photos but I think there is some law against putting up pictures of kids so I avoided those ones.


Interesting fact for you: I'm not sure how common this is, but my host family and all of Léonie's little friends sing Happy Birthday to You in English, even though most of them speak very little to no English at all.


It's nice to see the pretty laid back parenting styles of French parents. No theme for the party- no real food, just a LOT of candy, cake, and fruit juice. Defrosted cake with a candle on it- no Icing on the Cake extravaganza. It wasn't very planned but I guess it was assumed that as long as kids could run around and play with each other under the influence of candy they would be happy- and the assumption was correct! I loved my big birthday extravaganzas when I was little, but this was nice too.

I just got Valentines from my mom and my grandma- so cute! I have a Skype date with Mike on Saturday to watch a movie, in case you were wondering. I'm not sure how dorky that is so I'm not sure if I should tell everyone about it- but I think it's cute. Hope everyone has a good Valentine's Day!

I thought I would be blogging on Sundays, but I guess I'm switching to Wednesdays now- I only have one class at 4:30 and it doesn't take place every week. Sunday is my Skype day- let me know if you want to chat some Sunday morning! I would love to hear from any of you guys!

Love and bisous!