Wacky Wednesday?

Not very wacky of a day in my opinion. And not a lot really happened. At least nothing substantial worth writing about.

Second day of classes went pretty well (I'll stop numbering them as we go on with the month, but it's the first week so bare with me).

In lit we're looking at les Stances du Cid which is a soliloquy in Corneille's Le Cid where Rodrigue is torn between living a fulfilled life of love with Chimene or taking vengeance on Don Gormas (Chimene's father) for his own father's sake. We basically started a line by line, stanza by stanza analysis. The soliloquy starts with lines stating the torture Rodrigue is feeling before alluding to the fact that they are his feelings (does that make any sense?). Gilles asked us if we knew why Corneille wrote it like that. Like a pro, I answered saying that Corneille wants to show that Rodrigue's feelings of anguish are more important than his physical self. Heck yeah.

In Grammar, we continued to go over verbe tenses. We wrote out DR MRS VANDERTRAMP, and Anne-Cecile added passer to the list. For you anglophones reading this, DR MRS VANDERTRAMP is an acronym for the french verbes that are conjugated with the auxiliary être in verbe tenses that require an auxiliary. Anyway, the UVic girls and I were a bit surprised. Though I know that passer is conjugatd with être, I don't remember ever adding it to that acronym. Oh well. Now it can be DR MRS P VANDERTRAMP.

I decided to go to the English Translation course today instead of the Press/Economy/Politics. It was a lot better. I love the lady in charge of the class, Stéphanie. She's a riot, all the time. We translated a paragraph of a text about Animal Facebook. I don't have my note book out at the moment, but it was pretty hilarious. At the end of the class, we learned some French Proverbs. Avoir le coeur bien accroché to have a strong stomach. Passé l'arme à gauche means to kick the bucket aka die.

At lunch, Tang taught me about dorm rooms in China. She said they are approximately the size of the rooms we have here, but they house 4-6 people. I was shocked. They have two toilets/showers (which are no bigger than 2x2 metres each). There are 3 bunk beds, and 6 average sized desks. It's insane. I didn't believe her. As you probably know, China is immensely over populated and families are only allowed to have one kid. Tang told me it was an issue of over population, there are just too many students for there to be more comfortable living experiences. Even during their PhDs, students have to share their living quarters with another student.

After lunch, I went to the conférence: La France en chansons. It was the only conférence in English, but they had done it the day before in French. It was basically the history of the French working class through song. I was falling asleep and then all of a sudden I saw the words Sacré Charlemagne! on the PowerPoint. Oh my lord! I got so excited. I even sang along ahahaha. I posted it to Facebook too and tagged all the LaMarshians (at least the ones who came to mind). Haha we did that song for our Concert du Printemps in grade 2 and Dan Krantz was Charlemagne with a big long white beard. It was hilarious. I wonder if anyone has the video of it somewhere.

After that I came home and just hung out, spent some time by myself, some time Skyping. At 730pm was the Dîner du directeur. We went back to the courtyard at Cité U and were welcomed by some brass players. They only played one song. Once when they entered, once before Alain entered and once before each course of the meal. We socialized and socialized and some girls were really interested in the fact that I'm from the Falls. I told them it's not all it's cracked up to be haha. We were fed some kitsche lorraine and pâtes loirrains. It was delicious. Jessica, an American girl (who has a Bright Eyes tattoo and loves Conor .... ahem Lexi), came and hung out with us because she sprained her ankle the night before and all her friends had left her to go for dinner. After chatting about Bright Eyes and other music for a bit, they brought out the cheese. I don't remember all that was there, but there were maybe 15 different types (amongst the approx 365 here are in France) from different regions. It was interesting. Finally there was dessert but by the time that happened I was already headed home.

During the evening in the courtyard, Atyeh and I befriended the Iranian couples. They're very nice and invited us over for dinner next week. One of the couples has a daughter, Parnian, who is so cute. It was really cool to be able to use all three of my languages in one night. They were very impressed by my level of understanding and speaking in Farsi. Momma D would be proud.

I Skyped Sissy and now it's time to snooze. Weeeeoooooo goodnight.