Turning Point

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Today was a major turning point in our French lives. Hahaha, its really nothing serious, it just really cracks us up. In order to get the point across well I have to explain some things first. I've been meaning to make a post about my daily/normal/boring French life, because I know you are all so interested. Bear with me on this one, I'm doing this mainly for my mom and little cousins, so the post will be very randomly detailed.

First, here's my class schedule.
Monday: 1-2 CDL (we sit around on computers learning grammar)
2-4 Ecrit (writing)
4-5 Oral (we usually have to write up a little speech to present)
5-7 Phonetique (a student criticizes our accents)
Tuesday: 4-6 Civilisation (the best class ever with Yavanka who calls us her
American friends. Its probably important to know that me Libby and
Becca are in the next level's class because our level was to
easy and was basically a class on the ways of the Western world...thank
you I know all that already.)
Wednesday: 2-4 Orthographe (the professor reads a little story and one by one
we each write a sentence on the board while everyone else
writes in their notebooks...we then go through and correct what's on
the board...it takes forever)
Thursday: 8-12 Grammaire (yes, we have FOUR hours of grammar, but its also with
Yavanka and she rocks)
Friday: NO CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!


8:00 am Wake up (this time is approximate, sometimes I sleep later, sometimes I have to get up earlier, depending on my class schedule). I do my morning getting-ready routine, you don't need details.

8:30 am Breakfast. Usually we have bread and jam, sometimes pain au chocolat (I love those days) with some sort of fruit juice and hot chocolate (I've tried saying I don't want hot chocolate because really, who wants to drink hot chocolate every morning? but its like a cardinal sin or something here).

After breakfast I usually mess around on the computer or read or write in my travel journal (if I have anything important enough to write about) until class time or lunch time, whichever comes first.

12:00 Eat lunch. Without fail, no matter where I am or who I'm with, I eat a sandwich. But they're the good baguette sandwiches, or a panini at the university cafe. Usually ham, sometimes tuna.

Class is usually after lunch, but sometimes before. After class I head home and dink around some more on the computer.

7:30 Dinner. This is the biggie. Usually the French eat large lunches and smaller dinners. Not my family. I think they've altered their routine because dinner is when I eat at home. There are many courses: 1) Salad (or some other vegetable drenched in vinaigrette); 2) Meat and vegetables (usually chicken or beef, one time they fed me DUCK another time WILD BOAR. They said they'd tell me first when its rabbit); 3) Cheese (or for me, yogurt, because I have no idea what the cheese is); 4) Dessert...my favorite (anything from fruit to ice cream to eclairs to creme brulee).

I usually take my shower after dinner and watch some dubbed American shows with the family. Good thing all the shows are delayed here. If I haven't seen an episode of CSI in America already, I'm daydreaming for an hour.

I never go to bed at the same time. It depends on what time I have class the next day.

So yeah, there's my super exciting day!


I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we go to school with a bunch of Chinese students. It is odd. There's one other American (besides the five of us) and a handful of of other Europeans. The rest are all Asian (mostly Chinese). My entire class is Chinese, except for me, Libby, and Becca. They all have these little electronic French-Chinese translators and class time usually consists of a little game we call "Teacher takes away the dictionaries." There is a HUGE gap between the French abilities of us Americans versus the Chinese. We can't understand a word they say (they can't really understand us either though). Often, in oral, if the professor doesn't know what they are trying to say they have to write it on the board...its kind of funny actually. Sometimes we have to discuss something (ex. our leisure time activities) in groups. The professor will make the most out of the three Americans and make three groups with one of us in each to make sure the Chinese don't speak Chinese to each other. It usually still happens though. All of them know English, so the three of us know speak French to us so they can't understand what we are saying. How's that for irony?

As I have told some people, the three of us talk a lot in class because the Chinese don't. Usually what happens is the professor asks a question, I won't look at the professor, she waits to see if a Chinese student will answer the question, from here three things happen 1) a Chinese student answers and is right (very rare), 2) a Chinese student answers, is wrong, then the professor asks one of us to answer, or 3) nobody will answer, I look at the professor, and "Freya? can you answer?" why yes I can.

One time, in orthographe, the prof usually goes in a line with who writes on the board. This one time, she picked a student after us, so we never had to write on the board. When it came time to do the corrections, the three of us had to correct sentences, not a problem. The dictation had been taking a really long time and we were running over into the next class period (it was with the same prof, so not a problem). We were getting towards the end of the corrections, but the Chinese were having a hard time with it and taking a really long time. The prof kept saying "Quickly, quickly" en francais of course. They were still taking forever and not fixing the rights mistakes. Finally she said "Freya, you do it." It wasn't my turn at all, but she really needed someone to fix the sentence quickly, and correctly. We were amused.

Another example. If you didn't get this already, the three of us usually wait to see if a Chinese student can answer a question before speaking up. It gets tiring just hearing our three badly-accented French voices all the time. So today in grammaire, we were working on the past tenses of verbs (like I have been for the last five years of my French career). We had to write/say sentences or something in the past tense. The prof kept correcting different grammatical errors and asking if we know the grammar rule. Apparently I am the Yoda of French grammar, because I knew how to fix every mistake she found. After me answering a few times she didn't even ask the whole class if they knew why it was wrong, just me. I was amused again.

Turning Point:

Yesterday, we were shushed! We Americans couldn't answer anymore. It was odd. The professor hadn't picked a specific student to answer the question so Libby and I would start to answer, and we were shushed. We couldn't believe it. I happened again today sometimes. We've gotten pretty used to never being called on to write on the board or read a passage or something like that (unless of course its been 5 minutes and no on could come up with anything). So now we've gone from always talking/answering/responding to not being allowed to talk/answer/respond. We'll see if this lasts.

I think that was about all I had to talk about. If you have questions or want me to write about something specific ask me!! I'm running out of things to talk about until my next vacation (8 days 😊 ).

Tchao for now!

Freya

P.S. I apologize for any grammatical errors. I either meant it to be like that, or stopped correcting the post.

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