Today by 11a.m. I'd had one cup of tea and one cup of coffee, which is my self-imposed caffeine intake for a day and often as much as I have in a whole week - so not really good for one morning. This was partly because I had the impression of not sleeping at all last night, though I did realise this morning that it couldn't have been quite the case because I didn't feel as rough as I should have done if it were. This morning's caffeine is however wearing off which is frustrating as I have a lot of work to do.
It snowed as I walked from my house to French class, stopped when I got there, restarted in time to catch our walk to and from the canteen for coffee in the break, stopped again, restarted for the walk home, only merrily taking the opportunity to change to hail when I popped into the bank. My French teacher would indubitably seize on that to announce that the gods, all constructs of human culture, are vindictive towards humans. I merely found it rather humorous and thanked God that I had a hat. I'm now thanking God that after 2 hours with my radiator on full, wearing a thick jumper and huge dressing gown (me that is - not the radiator) that I'm starting to feel not quite as cold as before.
I may start awarding a 'False Announcement Of The Day' prize to one quote per week from my French teacher. Today's prize-winning quote would for announcing that of course Homer's Odyssey was legend: it was 'the first great adventure book before the Bible', which was so bizarre on a 2 counts that I wasn't sure what to interject so missed the moment.
One of my classmates said to me that it was interesting to hear my take on the caricatures of Mohammed fiasco since I was 'on the inside'. I pointed out that I wasn't defending Islam in any point I'd made, but she merely meant that I was truly religious - she agreed with what I'd said anyway. Another classmate managed to say that all Muslim people are behind, mediaeval, don't use their brains but just their feelings and don't understand about such things as freedom of expression since they aren't on the same level of advanced thinking as 'we are'. Nothing like cultural, socio-political and intellectual arrogance, eh?
I discovered for the first time that there exist words in French which although masculine in the singular, become feminine when pluralised. E.g. amour - if you have one love, it's masculine, but many are feminine. Curiouser and curiouser.
In coffee break with a few of the ladies in the class the conversation turned to juicers and I pondered inwardly that I would love a juicer/smoothie maker but it's the sort of thing that's rather extravagant to buy for oneself and so usually asked for on a wedding list. Sometime I shall buy one as a celebratory symbol of not putting my life on hold in a wait for a wedding list - not that life consists in the abundance of one's possessions! While on the topic of wish-lists, I came across these books by G.E.Veith and decided that I may just more or less want them all, and Steph Bushell points us to look to the wedding supper of the Lamb with an amusing imaginary scenario with setting up a wedding list in a John Lewis department store [HT: Bish].
Now not only have I exhausted my caffeine intake for the day, but also my random output. So it's back to work, and relative sanity should return to my next post...
6 comments:
guess I'm going to be using the feminine form of the word amour then! :P
*thinks of who to send a valentine's card to*
My teacher used the examples of "L'amour de mon mari" and "Les folles amours de ma jeunesse". Do the homework ;-)
The 'wedding list for singles' problem is easy, if only *everyone* would see it my way ;-) When you set up home in a flat or whatever, you have a housewarming party (I combined it with an informal dedication of my flat to the Lord's service). Ppl brought pressies, but not as big as they would have done for a wedding! Grrr, singles lose out again.
Whoa, I didn't know that about l'amour en pluriel!
What are you taking French class for? Your French is already excellent!
I got a juicer a while ago, and they're cool but expensive to use! You stick an apple in and get 1/3 cup of juice - by the time you've slaked 2 people's thirst, you're down 6 apples! It's tough, man, it's tough. C'est pas gagne, j't'dis!
Ah ok, Rhology perhaps you've quenched my thirst for a juicer... I dunno though, it's the concept of being able to do even a shot size own fresh pear and ginger juice, or raspberry and mango, or... well whatever you fancy defrosting from your stock of fruit put into little portions and frozen when you had that fun and hyper-organised trip to the market for fruit for juicing ;-)
Et pour le cours de français, beh, le Congolais de mon équipe m'a dit que ça serait bien de 'perfectionner' mon français... "eh oui je t'entends!" Mais non, c'est bien comme même - c'est un niveau élevé alors ça touche des aspects de l'orthographe et grammaire que je connais pas précisément et j'ai l'occasion de connaître d'autres dans la classe, ce que j'aime bien. J'ai la tendance perfectionniste - 2 fois aujourd'hui des personnes m'ont dit que je parle bien le français, et ça me fait plus conscient des occasions quand je n'arrive pas à bien exprimer ce que je veux dire: *insert rolling eyes emoticon here*
Ah oui, c'est compris, ca. J'aimerais bien un cours comme ca, moi aussi. Mais j'ai pas le temps - le japonais m'appelle!
Ce cours t'aide-t-il a perfectionner ton utilisation du subjonctif imparfait et le passe simple (litteraire)? ;-) J'appris le passe simple, moi, mais je n'aurais pas voulu qu'on m'apprisse le subjonctif imparfait! :-D
Post a Comment