I had kangaroo for lunch today. It was good, I enjoyed it. At first I thought it sounded too weird and I didn't want it, but then I realized it was that or some kind of fish that didn't look good to me (I was at one of the school cafeterias, which is far better than any school cafeteria I've had at home, and much cheaper as well). I know, you'd think fish sounds like a safer choice than kangaroo but I decided to try something new. How often do you get the chance to eat kangaroo?
I took my language placement test today. I don't know the results yet. There was a big written part and then we had to go talk to a professor who would decide how well we speak. The lady I talked to was nice and I think I know I did well on the speaking part, I'm just hoping I did decent on the written part.
Tomorrow I have no classes and then Friday we're leaving for the Basque country and San Sebastian in Spain. I'm actually very excited to go. It'll give me a chance to exercise my Spanish knowledge, I guess. I'll probably fail at that but it's okay because we'll only be there for a couple days. We're also going to Saint Jean-de-Luz, which is a nice French beach town. Yay, so excited! Tomorrow, since I have no classes, I think I'm going to go into town and find Jennifer and maybe make plans for some traveling that we'd like to do. She said she'd like to go to Paris with me when I go to meet up with Mom, because she flew in to Pau without getting to visit Paris. I'm just glad I've found a travel partner, I didn't want to ride a five and a half hour train by myself. Jennifer would also like to visit London, so we're going to discuss the possibility of finding a cheap way to visit London during fall break.
Last night, I had dinner with just my host father. He had just returned from taking their two children to get settled into school in Belgium. The claim was that my host mom's favorite show was on and she had to be out there to watch it, but I'm wondering if she ate separate from us so that I would talk. Either way, we ate just the two of us in the kitchen with the door closed, and I sat down there and talked to him for the duration of dinner and then for maybe an hour or two afterwards, as well. I'm not sure what it is. Why I can talk to my host dad just fine but I am too afraid to talk to my host mom. I'm kind of glad Paul and Caroline went away for college, too. Either way, I talked and that was the important thing. SEE, I'M NOT JUST HOLING MYSELF AWAY IN MY ROOM AND AVOIDING AT ALL COSTS!
This may seem a little redundant, but I like it when I get a chance to speak French in town. Today, Stephanie, Shelby (the guy Shelby. We have a girl one and a guy one) and I went to the bookstore to get our literature text books. I let Stephanie do the talking because she wants to practice as much as possible. Of course, she struggles a lot and when she doesn't understand something that someone says, I repeat it to her in a way I think she can understand, or if she says something that isn't quite clear I repeat it for the person she is talking to. Today at the bookstore, we found a person to ask about the book. It's not a book they usually carry. She asked him as best as she could whether or not they have the book, to which he said no and told us that we could order it (Just before that, we had talked to another lady who had said the same thing). She said something like, "okay thanks for the help," and they were getting ready to walk away so I had to step in and explain to the guy (just as I'd done with the lady before) that our teacher had ordered several of the books for us and she had already received the phone call saying they had come in (which is the point where the last lady had told us no again, and placed an order for us). This guy was much more helpful, and asked for our teacher's name and was able to find the books for us and cancel the order we'd just made. Shelby and Stephanie decided that I know the magic word...
I am already finding that after being here for two weeks, I can speak a lot better. Much more easily. I'm having an easier time picking up what other people say, too. I always have a hard time hearing, because I swear I'm already half deaf. But if I'm listening, I can pick up what people say fairly easily. It was a little frustrating at the bookstore when we were trying to talk to the first (very unhelpful) lady who was talking too fast for Stephanie to understand, so Stephanie said "slowly" and I told the lady (who didn't understand Stephanie's "slowly), "She wants you to speak slower, please" and the lady looks at me and says what she said before super slowly. Look, lady. I understood you fine, talk to the girl here who is trying to learn more. I understand though, that when you're working in customer service it's difficult to deal with someone that you can't communicate with very well, and you just want to get your job done as quick as possible. It's just amazing how many nice people in this town think it's cool that you are trying to learn, and they try to talk to you so that you can understand and practice.
I'm so glad I came here.
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