I'm Exotic!

So another week of school complete!!! Not understanding what most people are saying gets kinda old after awhile and each day feels pretty intense let alone a week. I'm glad I made it 2 weeks already! I'm not on a plane home...yet... Haha ;-)

School has been alright... French class is killer! They sit there analyzing philosophy and reading books while I am there thoroughly confused!  And I don't know if you have ever had to listen to someone speak a different language for long periods of time but it gets majorly boring and I'm usually falling asleep within the first 5 minutes. I have to draw to keep myself awake and once I am conscious enough, I'll look up words with my handy dandy French-English dictionary! :) And once I start falling asleep again, I will write letters to my family and friends or just draw again! If my pen is moving, it creates the illusion that I'm actually working when in reality, I have no clue as to what is occurring! I'll ask Amel sometimes "What are we supposed to be doing?" and she'll just say "It's too hard for you. Just draw!" She said it's even hard for her and she speaks French so for mean that means it ain't happening anytime soon!

History/Geography is rather dull too! Because the teacher just gets up and starts blah blah blahing about who knows what!!! Well... I guess everyone else in the class knows but me! Anyways, the teacher is kinda crazy! She gets really passionate about history! Like she'll say pretty harshly "...if you don't know that, you're stupid!" and so on and so forth.... It's kinda funny for me because I can only guess as to what she is referring! I'm kinda interested to see how they perceive America and also world events through the eyes of the French. Because every country wants to be the best!!! Would a French person ever teach "And then we surrendered because we were chickens..."??? Of course not! They'll turn it into a way to make it look like they are the hereos... as would any other country. But I think we all really know who the hero ALWAYS is...USA! USA! USA! Haha just kidding but seriously :-)

Again my favorite class is definetely English! I have to read articles and answer questions in English... I don't exactly need to be the brightest crayon in the box to figure that one out! On Monday, I had to answer the questions "If you were to live abroad, what would you miss most about your home country?" Haha!!! I just said "I'll tell you exactly what I miss...blah blah blah" :-) But now there is all this pressure to speak all fancy and educatedly (Obviously that is difficult for me) :-) so I have to pull out my "secret weapon vocabulary"! Haha when one of my English teachers calls roll, she'll always be like "Alyssa hello! How are you today?" And she'll just call everyone elses' names! And the teachers will always call on me for every single question!  Uhh hello...I'm not the one who needs the practice here!!! Amel says it's because "I'm exoctic" Haha I tell her "I think you mean foreign... Exotic is like parrots, islands, flowers, and pineapples." Haha she's like "No you are exotic" :-) Haha I will help some people with their English :-) so at least I'm good for that!

Thursday was a pretty good day! I was supposed to have PE in the morning from 8-10. The bus was going to pick us up to take us to the pool. I was not even close to prepared for swimming. I didn't have a one-piece bathing suit, a cap, or goggles so I most likely wasn't going to swim anyway. But yeah for me! The bus never came! Haha so I had 2 hours to burn! There is this other American at the school. He's from California so I went with him and some of his friends to the beach. We went swimming in the sea!!! Haha how cool is it that just down the street from my school there is a beach! So I went swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and got ice cream! Seriously, only in France!!

That night I had this French tutor... He is abolutely crazy! Haha first off, you should have seen his clothes! They were really tacky and cheap suits. I think it would be the equivalent in the US as a BARGAIN at Goodwill! Now that's bad!!! And his English was not super good because normally he teaches kids English from French. Everthing he did I could have easily done myself. I can learn French and ask anybody around me about how to pronounce it! And he would say I made mistake when I know for a fact I did it right! He's like you didn't do blah blah blah and I would say "Heck yes I did"!! He wouldn't do any lesson under 2 hours and that's just too long to have to sit there and learn French... plus it was expensive. That was my last lesson so I kinda jerked him around a little. It's mean I know... But hilarious!!! He would say things in English wrong and I would be like "What are you talking about???" even when I could understand where he was somewhat getting at. For example, he was talking about how the French alphabet sounds differently than the English one but he said it's spelled differently! I was like "No it is spelled the exact same!!!" Haha :-) And I would say "I know this why do we have to do it" etc... At the end he was like, "Why aren't you your normal self today?" and I said "Well how do you not know that last week wasn't my normal self and today is normal because you've only met me twice!" And he said "Well maybe you just had a bad day" And I said "No I had a fantastic day today!!!" Haha he said I wasn't motivated! Haha I came from my nice little life in the US to here just to learn French! How's that for motivation????

Friday I got out by noon and as per usual Friday tradition I took a nap right once I got back! One week of French school makes me one tired girl! That night I went to a class at the gym called Body Pump. You lift weights along with music and such but me... lifting weights... not a good idea... Haha first off, I have no arm strength whatsoever! I do cross country, soccer, and track. Not many of those involve having buff arms! Second of all, the class was obviously going to be in French. I had gone to the biking class there and that wasn't so bad because I had done cycling classes like it in the US so I knew relatively what was going on. But I had never experienced anything like Body Pump. When I was getting my stepping block, I dropped the bottom blocks and it went all over. I caused a little bit of a commotion (I think France has made me really clumsy because I do stuff like this all the time... Trip on chairs or even on my own feet and I randomly drop things for no reason etc...) so that was a good start. During the class, I had to watch Pascaline the entire time because I was totally clueless! I would just laugh most of the time! I was like "Wow I stink at this..." Haha and I had very small weights but still... It's the day after and I am sore like no other!! :-/

Sam had to have a little surgery on Friday. Somehow, he had gotten a tooth stuck in his ear!!! Crazy! Right? He had fallen asleep with it and it got in his ear and the skin started to grow over the tooth! Uhh... it just makes me cringe! So he had to be put under anesthsia. Poor kid! I can imagaine how not fun that would be!

 Trying to learn a new language has to be one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had! It's not something you can just learn really quick!! It takes time and I've just kinda learned to go with it and soak it all in. I get kinda impatient sometimes like "Can I please just learn this language already???". I just wish I could wake up tomorrow and speak French no problem. Unfortunately, that's not very realistic... I actually have to work!!

~Oh and by the way I added pictures to my previous posts so go check them out :-)