Classes and Unfortunate Laundry Episodes.

Wrote this last week... just posting it... blogfail.

Classes officially started on Thursday. Thursday is my Hell Day (I have one each semester) and I had four classes. Written French (easy), Eng -> French Translation (not too easy), French -> Eng Translation (not bad), and The World of Work (interesting).

My classes (with the exception of my translation classes, because they’re with French students) are broken up by level- A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2 being the highest. I’m in C1, and I have most of my classes with other C1 students and the occasional C2 student. I guess I was assuming that my “classes with other foreign students” would be made up primarially of other Americans, like they were in the Dominican Republic. Nope. Not at all.

Here’s an example- in my Oral Expression class Monday (oh, yeah, I also had that. Seems easy), there were no less than ten countries represented. Three Americans, two Indonesians, one German, one Brazilian, two Colombians, one Chinese, two Japanese, one Vietnamese, one Cuban, and one Pole. And that’s a small class.


Another type of pole. I AM SO WITTY.

It’s just such a cool experience, even just meeting these people! Despite speaking three languages, I guess I just kind of totally ignored the fact that other people could learn foreign languages too and we could communicate in these non-native languages. Yeah dumb. I just assumed that I’d never have a conversation with… say, a Japanese person unless they learned English, or I learned Japanese. I never factored in them learning French or Spanish.

So yeah, I’m having all these conversations with people who speak neither English, nor French, nor Spanish as a first language… yet we can totally understand each other. It’s really cool.

Hmmm what else is up. Tuesday I attempted to do laundry. I’ve been doing my own laundry fairly competently for the past 8ish years, without ever having a problem. This time, however, I had a few. Instead of pouring like, a liquid in with the wash, my host mom puts in these little blocks of cleaner. When I did my laundry Tuesday (last week my host mom did it for me), I accidentially grabbed the wrong block and instead put in the block for the dishwasher. And once you start the cycle, you can’t stop it… so there was really nothing I could do.

Secondly, and much more stupidly, I did something that I’ve only seen happen in the movies. Well, okay, for the record, I’ve done this a million times and it’s never been a problem. Maybe it’s the detergent they use in the States or something… I don’t know. So I mix my lights and darks. I just mix everything, usually, and never have any issues. This time, this included a bright red scarf that I was washing for the first time. Do you get where I’m going with this? Yeah. I turned everything that was white/grey in my wash into a nice, pale, pink. This includes every single one of my socks, my white tank top, my grey cardigan (which is now an ugly pinky grey color), and some other things. Fail.

When I haven’t been in class, with friends, or damaging my laundry… I’ve been…

Reading- there’s a really nice mini-library at the Franco-American center that I’ve been going to to get books. Yes I know I should be reading in French… I will… just give me some time… I’m in the middle of a really good series… okay done with excuses.

Taking walks and listening to audio books- aka my new obsession. I listened to the first two books in The Hunger Games series (The Hunger Games and Catching Fire) and now I’m almost done with Will Greyson Will Greyson.

Watching TV online- Just finished up Skins season 4, now I need to find/catch up on The Office and Glee.

Working out- There’s a park by my house, and a swimming pool that’s 2 Euro an hour.

Planning for February break- We’re going to Morocco! I’ll include more details once I know them… right now I’ve done nothing more than buy my tickets.