April 8, 2009

Wednesdays are wonderful days, and America should take notice. It’s so nice to be able to stay out late on Tuesday nights, to sleep in late in Wednesday mornings, to rest in bed and blog while eating some yogurt and tea. Wednesdays, usually a relatively mediocre middle of the week slump, has taken on a new meaning.

As today is Wednesday, and as I have my bedside tea all ready, I thought now would be a good time to blog. So blog I will.

I think I last left off by talking about my Saturday adventures with Shawna and Jonathan in Montpellier. Sunday was an equally lovely day. We planned a picnic at the Palais des Papes, and just sat around reading in the sun. Marcel Pagnol is so much more of an agreeable playwright when he can be read while lying in the grass. Upon arriving home, Isabelle had an early dinner together. I’ve come to the conclusion that Sunday is her sugar day...we had an assortment of little cakes, cut strawberries on top of a flaky crust with cream, hot chocolate...etc. Shawna and I thought we were going to die of sugar consumption. After dinner, Isabelle asked that we help Marie with her English homework...it was quite an interesting experience! First of all, Marie is a little genius, I swear. Her English abilities, at the age of 13, far surpassed anything I learned even in high school. It was really interesting to see the mistakes she made. For example, she used an abnormal amount of articles in inappropriate locations. At first I found it strange, as I was reading her sentences from an English standpoint. In trying to explain to her why you can’t say “a birds,” however, I figured out just why she used so many articles. In French, there are very very few times when you don’t use articles in front of a noun. I don’t know why this is the case, but Marie was apparently applying this same concept to English. It was a little linguistic nerd moment, but I really had fun helping her.

Monday we started our second week of class. There’s nothing too spectacular to note on that. We did, however, get to watch Lucie Aubrac, a French film about a WWII French Resistance heroine, Lucie Aubrac. We had just finished reading a novel written by her, so it was only appropriate that we watch the movie based off of her life. We had watched the film at some point in high school, but I don’t remember the historical context being explained to us. Understanding the context made the film much more enjoyable and informative, and reinforced M. Boury’s (our literature professor) favorite phrase: “Il n’y a jamais de texte sans contexte” (there is never text without context). I know some literary theorists that would disagree (*sigh*), but I completely subscribe to Boury’s concept.

The walk to school was overcast on Tuesday, but I personally find rainy days much more suitable to hours of class. Tuesday is our obnoxiously long day. We have class from 9 in the morning until 5:30 at night. Compared to my OU schedule, this totally sucks. The day starts with grammar, and then after only a short break, we have to go straight to M. Boura for history. M. Boura, although he is incredibly intelligent, an expert in his field, and a quite sweet man, is not exactly the best teacher for international students. I do think he is getting a little better, though. He used less words that I don’t even know how to define in English, actually asked for student feedback, and kind of gave us an outline. This is an improvement. I personally feel awful for history professors. In a weird way, they make me think of dentists. Although dentists have achieved a high college degree, are skilled in their work, and deserve respect, absolutely no one wants to go see them. M. Boura, and many history professors, must experience this same syndrome. And really, it must be depressing. The difference between dentists and history professors, however, is that I cannot doodle in the dentist’s chair.

We have a break after history (thank heavens) to catch our breaths and stretch our legs. Most of my break was taken up with vending machine coffee, steak-frites with Kyle, and a jaunt to the ATM. Oh, and rain. It wasn’t exactly the most refreshing break. Thankfully, I really enjoy literature, so it wasn’t too terrible to sit through two more hours of class. Tuesday, we talked about Honoré de Balzac, one of the most prolific authors ever (excuse me while I have a literature nerd moment). Balzac was born of a Bourgeois family, and, according to his mother, should have been a notary, as it was a very profitable position. Balzac, apparently, said no. Instead, he produced 137 books of roughly 300 pages each in a grand total of 30 years. Dying of a heart attack at the age of 51, he in effect killed himself with his ardent work. What we have left of Balzac is his enormous literary output, a sculpture by Rodin, over 2000 characters, and the genre of realistic fiction, which he invented and popularized.

Nothing worth mentioning really happened between literature and 9:30, other than a giant dinner (as usual). After dinner, Thomas invited Shawna and me to play a game with him. We agreed. We ended up playing an absolutely hilarious game (whose name I cannot remember). I lost. Miserably. But that’s alright...it was still nice to get to hang out with the kids and have them explain the rules to the game in French that we would understand. Around 9:30, Shawna and I met up with Jenny and walked to Red Sky, one of our new favorite Avignon locations. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my OU friends and I’m very blessed to have close friends here, but I am in France to learn French. I’ve found that on many of our little soirées, a many of the OU students sit in our little OU student circle, speaking English to each other over a beer or a cocktail. That’s stellar, but that could be done essentially anywhere (minus the beer or cocktail in America, as most of us are under 21). My favorite part about going out in Avignon is talking to the French...in French. It’s Tuesday nights or weekends when I find myself speaking and learning the most French, not in grammar class, nor in literature class, nor even oral production class (in which I have only said one or two sentences aloud).

Getting this amount of practice on my own makes me really look forward to my time in Belgium, where I’ll essentially be alone a lot of the time. Well, I’ll have Bernard and family of course, but I won’t have the OU bubble that so often is hindering to the whole language practice thing. If we could all speak French to each other all of the time, we would be champs at French upon our return to the United States. Unfortunately, after six hours of class and with brains crammed with details about the Jeanne d’Arc and Balzac and lessons in indirect discourse, we just aren’t that motivated. I must say, however, that Shawna and I spoke exclusively in French on our thirty minute walk to class Tuesday morning. We were proud. Eight and a half hours later, however, we couldn’t find it within ourselves to take the return trip in the same fashion.

Eh, I got off topic. That’s alright, there’s nothing else really to say about my little daily adventures. However, as today is Wednesday, perhaps I’ll return tomorrow to write about some new ones! =] Enjoy your day! (And I’m sorry for all you who have snow. It is 65 degrees. And sunny.)