mercredi (wednesday)

As the title implies, it's Wednesday and I got out of classes at 15h. The daily e-mailing takes a bit and I'm surprised how fast my time in the library goes.

So, today was another day of grammer and phonetics, with listening activities, irregular verb boxes (conjugating all of them and memorizing random changes in "patterns") and a dictation that was a page long. I owned the irregular verbs, thanks to Dr. Gilman's class last semester. I think about that class so much; it's really been a saving grace and I'm only on the third day of class. I was one of three people in the class that got their work on the board completely correct- if I could insert an image here of my blowing on my nails and buffing them on my shirt, I would.

The dictee was definitely a total confidence check, though. He read a sentence at a time and we had to write everything down, including punctuation and accents. We all did horribly, but we took a long time to correct them. Then, we had to adapt the dictation subject to our country (the one we did described people in France) and write something similar in length. It was a lot easier than I was expecting; I've noticed that I'm remembering a lot more verbs, which helps your writing sooo much.

We had an hour break at midi for lunch, and Jon and I spent the last little bit of the break sitting in the sun, watching the clouds move over the mountains. Each day I spend here makes me love this part of the country even more. In the culture part of my courses, I'm learning even MORE things that make me love it... I really don't want to leave, and I know now for sure that I will be back here. I can't wait to share all of my pictures and experiences.

At 13h, I went back into class. We had to choose between a scavanger hunt in the city or a culture quiz. I took the culture quiz, which was really a discussion about a lot of facts we need to know about France, the Rhone Alps (our region) and Savoie (our department). We talked a lot about the social attitudes of France, and the two hours went really quickly. It's amazing how much French you can understand when it's all that's being thrown at you. I'm still working on shutting the English part of my mind off when I speak, so I can form what I want to say without putting it in English first.

I'm going to go snag some groceries to make dinner and get some studying done. Hopefully, I'll be able to go to the park or something instead of just sitting in my room. It's been raining every night, but the days are gorgeous. If I can get there before 18h, I should have a bit of time.