Ouest France!

Well, today was fun. I had class again at 8h20 and thoroughly enjoyed it! The class is called Global Simulation. We make up fictional characters for ourselves and play this roll the entire semester. My name is Christophe Crétien and I’m married to a woman named Chloé Crétien. My parents are French, but they moved to the United States before I was born. This means that I am an American, but I now live in France where I met my wife Chloé.

After class I had lunch with a girl in my class from the University of North Texas. We ate on campus in what’s called the Resto U. That simply stands for Restaurant Universitaire. While we were eating I saw two Chinese students from our class sit down at a nearby table, so I asked them to join us. They did and we spoke French the entire time. When I went to fill up our water pitcher, I ran into another girl from our class from Finland who was eating alone. I asked her to join us as well. It was quite the sight I’m sure! As we were speaking I noticed two French girls watching us like we were yet another zoo exhibit.

Commercial:
Australian Announcer: Watch the foreign tribe try to communicate using words uncommon to their own vocabulary! Wait a moment! Check out the red haired little fellow! He looks frustrated and might attack!

I finally turned to the girls and said, “J’imagine que c’est très drôle d’entendre les étrangers parler français!” (I bet it’s funny to hear foreigners speak French !) The just smiled and one of the girls said, “Mais tu parles très bien!” (But you speak very well!) This made me just a little happy on the inside!

After lunch we had another class that wasn’t quite as fun. We just looked at French newspapers and searched for the differences between each of them. The group I was with was very intent on making sure that we did a good job. We have to present these newspapers next week to the class and explain the differences. I wasn’t that pressed on making sure that we memorized each newspaper, but one girl in my class decided that we needed to each take the papers home and read them so that we can explain to one another what each paper is like. Please! Newspapers!? I suggested that we just talk about the sections of the newspapers and how they differ from those of the other newspapers. I guess that won’t cut it. I tried to explain that we don’t need to take the papers home and make a big deal out of it; however, this particular little lady insisted that we scrutinize the heck out of them. I don’t even think it’s for a grade! I might find better things to do between now and next week!

After class I went to the gym where, this time, I was not treated like a zoo exhibit. I just worked out and swam. It was very relaxing! I then went home and waited for the dinner call (À TABLE!). Tonight we ate pizza, salad, bread, cheese, yogurt, and clementines (which is actually the same word in French). Yves was late because he was coaching a little league rugby team. Before he got home, Hélène told me that this Saturday Yves would be having a crêpe party at the house that I would be invited to attend! Yay! French people! This weekend it turns out that Yves-Marie, Hélène, and Benedict will all be leaving to visit their other son/brother in east France. That means it will just be Yves and I holding down the fort for the weekend. Next week it will be just Yves-Marie and I holding down the fort! Someone should pay me for doing all this holding!