Hello everyone! I hope you all had a nice weekend! I am jealous of everyone who can watch the football games today, although I guess I won't be jealous if the Bears end up losing horrifically. The only Iowa football game I was able to watch in France was the Iowa vs. Northwestern game, which was the beginning of their downward spiral. So, as my Dad would say, perhaps I am unlucky for my teams this year ;)
So I ended my last blog post with the exciting news that for the first time in my entire life, my French was actually complimented by a real-life French person! Well, the confidence gained from that wonderful experience was quickly smashed to pieces the very next day. Well, sort of, because the other person involved is a (okay, I just opened up Microsoft Word to use the thesaurus to find an alternative to the phrase "nasty bitch," but "no results were found." Sorry (but not really)). Anyway, I put off and put off my encounter with this individual until I could no longer avoid it. I practiced the necessary dialogue three or four times with my roommate, and then I set off to this ordeal over with.
I managed to get 4 or 5 words out of my mouth when I first noticed this person's face contorting into the first of many grimaces. But this is the problem with having to explain this experience in a blog rather than face to face, because the grimace conveyed so much. For example, this was not the same "grimace" that naturally and instinctively overcame me when a poor teenage boy's voice went from baritone to soprano while he was speaking in my class. No, that was more of a surprised "oh my!" sort of grimace. Instead, this other person's grimace was one that clearly conveyed a pure form of disgust. The sort of disgust that you would feel if your son brought home his new girlfriend and it turned out to be Snooki. Or the sort of disgust you would feel as you were listening to a mass murderer talking about the enjoyment that was derived from killing children.
Okay, that might be a BIT dramatic, but still, he/she was cringing (physically cringing!!!) as I spoke to him/her. And I couldn't help myself--I started laughing. I mean, for God's sake how many times in your life does someone cringe while you are talking?! What kind of person does that?! Its not like I was telling him/her I just murdered 20 of my students. Anyway, laughing didn't help the situation out because I immediately lost my place in the memorized dialogue, and had to start over. Ahh...such enriching life experiences I am having! :)
Anyway, I have to hurry things up because I have to be at another assistant's house for dinner in 15 minutes. So to quickly summarize--on Friday night I went out with some other assistant's to an electronic music festival in Roubaix (just outside of Lille). It was a lot of fun and some of the DJs were actually really good (the exception being the drunken, drugged up one who kept trying to dance on top of his equipment while he was playing and while others were playing). I didn't get back to Douai until 7:15am though, so I spent most of the day out of commission. But it was definitely worth it!
I don't work on Wednesdays, and today I found some really cheap tickets to Paris. So I am going to spend this Wednesday in Paris! I am so excited! I need to figure out what I want to do! The Louvre...hitting up the sales...walking around the Latin Quarters/Shakespeare and Co, etc. I can't wait!
Have a good week everyone! Go Bears!! :)
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