Soundbites

I'm starting to think about learning a language as storing soundbites. You beginning collecting soundbites when you study language, but they aren't complete—it's like the neurons are halfway fired, and the sound is really faint when you try to recall it. It isn't until they are all around you, all the time, coming from real french mouths, that you can real store a complete and accurate sound.

I'm always rehearsing things in my head that I hear in passing..."et après," "pas de soucis," "tu as envie de..." "comment ça s'est passé," and the list is becoming longer and longer and the collection of soundbites more and more connectable as my brain loosens up to the language. As far as the brain-mouth connection, usually I find what I rehearse in my brain is perfectly pronounced and makes grammatical sense—getting it to come out that way isn't always an easy task. If I'm nervous about who I'm talking to, or what I'm talking about, it becomes difficult. Or, if I think about it too much.

I finished last weekend by going to a get together at Emily's, the assistant who had my job in France last year and is still in Orléans, apartment. It was really nice. Good to be in a more french-ified situation, and to get to know Emily!

This week, I've had classes at the lycée. I've mostly still been introducing myself and running the same activities. The class I had today, I substituted for the teacher who was absent for the whole class—it went pretty well, although it was mostly boys who were a little hard to keep under control, and they said a few inappropriate remarks in both French and English, so I had to play bad cop. But even though they sometimes fool around, I can still tell that they are good kids (for the most part), so it doesn't bother me very much. I really like having the variety of ages, the high school kids at the lycée, and the middle school students (who are the equivalents of 5th to 8th grade) all day on Friday. I look forward to different things about both groups. 

Last night, I went to a local pub with a bunch of assistants to watch the Spain-France soccer game. France was struggling up until the end, when they scored the tying goal at the very last second. Everyone in the bar began to scream and holler and jump. It was a pretty amazing thing to witness. Also, on the tram on the way to the pub, we met a woman who showed us pictures of her cat on her phone, in response to our sadness to seeing a dead pigeon outside the window: "don't worry–there are still beautiful things in the world!" she said. It was pretty precious.

Yesterday, the sun came out for the first time in a long while, which was really nice. Here are some pictures of the river, la loire:

Oohh, and also, on Monday night, I went to my first rehearsal with a chorus! I spoke more French there than my whole time here! The people were really nice, and one woman even drove me home. I'm going to have to be a soprano, but ça va.