Café gourmand is a serving of espresso, alongside one or more small desserts. Experience the magic of metaphor.
This past week has been really enjoyable, although it didn’t always seem like it would be. My host mother’s sister is staying with us for a while (since last Tuesday), and I had been kind of stressed because I don’t always know how to be nice and friendly in French, so I thought she might dislike me or find me cold/egotistical. But luckily I have found ways to ask her questions and things, and I am no longer worried that she doesn’t like me! Yay small victories.
Speaking of small victories, I got my first (ungraded) assignment back from my Romanticism professor, and I did really well on it! Well, at least, that is what I gleaned from his “appréciation” of the content of my paper; he said it was a detailed and very interesting analysis of a well-understood text. That made me really happy! I also did really well on my history mid-sem, and I am always glad when my professors think I am smart. I do have a mid-sem for Romanticism tomorrow, and I haven’t really studied, so I do hope that goes well.
While I’m talking about academics: I received the assignment for my literature course at the fac (university) today. It’s just a “reasonably long” paper about the book we’re reading, due in two weeks. The only problem is that I haven’t read the book yet because I am a horrible student. But the professor seems really nice and surprisingly given to arm-grabbing and what I will generously call “excessive leading” when taking students somewhere (and by that I mean that he said, “follow me to the teachers’ room so I can give you your topic,” and made to grab my arm before I hurriedly said, “yeah!” and started jogging up the stairs). It is kind of a French sensibility to touch people more–obviously it is also a personality thing– but I don’t know, personal bubble and all. It was not creepy or anything, don’t get me wrong. It was just a very clear illustration about French vs. American concepts of space at times.
I have been spending a lot more time with my friends recently, which I think is a really good thing. Last weekend some of us went to “Ensemble pour l’Europe,” a conference with about 25 Christian groups that had stands. We were going to stay for the students’ night, but things turned out to be pretty boring, so we went to my friend’s apartment and ordered pizza instead. Then we went to a different church for a special concert thing, which ended at around 10:30PM. Not wanting to go home yet, we went to our other friend’s apartment and just hung out and talked until about 2:15AM and everyone was tired. It was really fun, but I didn’t get home until about 2:30, so getting up for church the next day was kind of a battle.
But in the end it was good because Sunday afternoon, we went and saw “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which was very stirring! Very emotional and sad, I thought. But it was really enjoyable as well. We are currently trying to put together something for St. Patrick’s Day (but we’re celebrating Friday evening), and it’ll hopefully be fun. IES is taking the students to the beaches of Normandy this weekend, and I am pretty excited about that. I like bus rides, so it will be nice because it is quite a long ride.
So it has been an excellent week, and it is shaping up to remain that way. The only negative things going on right now is the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep really since Friday night (I go to bed early but can’t seem to fall asleep, and it is really annoying because I still have to get up pretty early), and the fact that I am having worse allergies right now than I have ever had before. So I am usually tired and sneezy, but other than that, things are pretty awesome. Yay!
It only took about two hours total! Plus I was watching Psych at the same time.
