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Published: February 3rd 2011
Just got back from school and I feel so worn out. I have almost created my schedule for the semester and I am so happy to be done with it because it has caused me no end of grief. I have to find a different time for my French/English translation classes because they conflict with a lecture class I have on grammar and I REALLY need that lecture class. I met a girl from Ireland named Jesse who is in almost all of my Italian classes and I found out she's in the same boat as I am. We both have had roughly two years of Italian classes from scratch (not knowing anything/or very little before starting). She was here the semester before and had a really rough start because she didn't know (as did I) that our peers have been taking Italian classes in high school for roughly 5 years. So everyone else in our classes has at least a 3 year head start on us. I find that to be really strange because that means that if you want to take a language class in college it has to be decided when you're in high school. In other words one cannot pick up languages while studying other things and one cannot change their minds and decide to be a language major after high school. I really wish someone (my advisor) had told me this because I've really dug myself a hole here. I have nothing left to complete my diploma except Italian courses one French class and two capstone classes for my international relations major which must be completed at home and since almost all of the Italian classes here are way too hard for me I have pretty much nothing to do. I will say that Mondays are busy for me. I have class starting at 8h30 and don't finish until after 13h30. I will have to find another time to do my French/English class (as I said earlier) and that will hopefully be on a day I don't already have class. I tried another translation class today that was Italian to French and that was hard but I'm going to try the homework and go next week to see how I do. The professor is really super nice too even though she talks really fast. Tomorrow there are two classes I want to try as well that I hope will not be too hard and I can keep for credits. Besides those classes I have nothing else. I guess I'll have to get a hobby. I do plan to read a lot of French literature while here. I have all of the Harry Potter books in French and I bought the first Twilight book in French here and want to read them to compare the linguistic differences. I figure this will be good in helping me decide if I really want to make my living translating texts (which I think I really want to do). I love love love my French/English translation class. I have two different teachers, one for each class, and they're both quite comical. It's so strange to hear English English instead of American English and it was a bit of a shock when I first heard it from everyone in the class but me. I'm such a sore thumb here haha. I really wish they offered a phonetics class here because I would really like to be able to work on my pronunciation. I feel like I have come a long way since I got here as far as vocabulary, word order, flow, and speed but there are still some words that I have trouble pronouncing like a native French speaker. I guess this will come with time as well. They are really adamant about the use of paper here so the professors can't make copies of texts to give out in class, instead they email them to you and you have to go to the BU (Bibliotheque Universitaire or school library) to print them out. This did not go as I planned. All of the files were jpegs which I don't understand how the professor even got them into that format so I couldn't open them in a word document. I could only view them. I forgot to make sure the document fit on the page and so when I went to print them all 6 pages came out with only a portion of the text on them. After a lot of cursing I had to go find another computer because the one I had was taken (duh) and had to start all over again trying to figure out how to change the format of the documents to fit the page. Let's just say I know a lot more French computer vocabulary now. I finally succeeded and started to head home. On my way back I met up with this huge freakin' seagull. It always sits in the road near where I live and watches me walk to class like it is seriously debating on whether to eat me or not. I've decided to call him Peter. Peter followed me home. Seriously. He kept lookin' at me so creepy-like but I was totally prepared to kick him if he came too close. He eventually flew away but I'm betting he'll be back. Tonight Titou and I are gunna hang out and I'm going to make him try a PB&J sandwich. He says it sounds disgusting but I bet he won't say that after he has one of MY PB&Js. Well I must depart to start doing some homework. I swear I will never complain about doing homework ever again after this because never have I had harder homework than this. Just THINK about trying to translate a newspaper article from French to Italian....yeah. me too.
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Mike
non-member comment
Due Diligence
Keep up the hard work Debbie! Take time to reflect on the many obsticles you've overcome since leaving RIC and the valuable lessons learned along the way. Soon you'll be settled into the semesters' schedule and will be able to focus on the task's at hand. It was nice to see (Skype) you Friday night and hope you've had a nice weekend. Love, Mike PS: You may consider putting a cracker in your pocket to use as a decoy incase Peter gets too friendly, :) lol!