Assignments

Hi there.
I've been rather dull this week: that's what happens when you do no work all semester and suddenly find yourself hit with three assignments due all in the space of 1.5 weeks.

Oh, ok I did work for Linguistics, because it's really interesting; I also remember a lot about my culture lessons because I love them; furthermore I did a commentaire (in-class two hours) on the film of Le Festin de Babette for Methodology.

It's fairly unlucky that all these things are due at the same time.

Oh, I forgot that I also had a mid-term exam for Ling, and another two-hour test for Culture (commentaire).

Week (N)
Meant to have had:

• Wed: 2 h X in-class commentaire on a painting or a lettre de Mme de Sevigne
• Wed: 2 h X in-class commentaire on a film seen in-class about the significance of French Food in the text.

But Mme. Rollin was away and so all got shifted to the next week.

Week (N+1)

• Wed: 4 h X catch-up tests
• Thurs: 2.5 h X Ling. mid-term

Week (N+2)

• Fri: 3 page commentaire due on an extract of La Toison d'Or by Theophile Gautier

Week (N+3)

• Tues: an in-class expose meant to last 1/2 h on a dream out of Mrs Dalloway or 3 page commentaire with three parts (themes if you like): Due Tomorrow, FUCK!
• Fri: another commentaire due on La Toison d'Or.

I'm fully getting into this whole literature thing, however: it makes me wonder whether I would have been better off doing Lit. at school rather than TEE Art/Art History. This said, analysing literature is much like analysing a painting, perhaps even easier.

Argh, gotta to go finish this piece of work and grab some groceries.

• Capsicum
• Lettuce
• Pasta Sauce
• Eggs
• Milk
• Margarine
• Fruit
• Biscuits
• Rice
• Prawns
• Noodles.

Improvement

It is only now when I use MS Word to write my commentaire on this short story, that I realise how much my French has improved in two months. Incroyable... Que les mots coulent de mes mains qui tapent comme une sorte de machine-cerveau. TAPE-TAPE-TAF{E a l'epoque c'etait qqch je le convoitais, et que les mots me viennent comme un tropeau de moutons a un berger.

Putain de merde! Pourquoi je ne peux pas faire les accents francais avec ce putain de forme epistolaire! Je m'excuse, mes petits. Mais je me sens vraiment vivement. Je me leve tot (ok, je dirais assez tot pour moi, la Belle dormante, je fais des devoirs, et que je me sens bien!

Que la vie est belle. J'ai de la convivialite mais je peux encore perfectionner mon francais. Ce serait dommage de repartir de Paris, apres avoir tant appris. J'ai fait si tant de progres! Mon prof en Australie, nous avions dit, que la piste d'apprentissage sera dur des le depart de la premiere seance de son cours. Je dois trouver un moyen de maintenir mon bon niveau de francais a UWA pour que je n'oublie rien!

Mais je n'oublierais jamais les amis que j'ai fait ici a Paris. JAMAIS.

Things about Living Alone.

Listling Without Commentary: 19 Things About Living Alone

1. If you set a thing down, it just stays there.
2. You could die and people might not find your body for weeks.
3. There is no dissemination of responsibility. Also there is no responsibility.
4. You will feel the need to explain why you live alone so people don’t think you are a sociopath.
5. You must play music all the time. The quiet is when the weird creeps in.
6. You may feel like someone could break in and kill you at any moment, and in some ways you’re right.

Not actually possible since I live on the 6th floor and I am the only one with access to a key

7. No one ever knows where you are. Usually you are home.
8. Your fridge may just have hummus and four kinds of beer, and I guess that’s okay. Or only has tamarind and chicken stock on Sundays and equally three empty bottles of milk.
9. Things you won’t just have, unless you go out of your way to buy them yourself: band-aids, q-tips, mayonnaise, dryer sheets.
10. Accept the fact that you will never know which day the trash and recycling is picked up. Picked up everyday I think?! We have a bin man that does that for the residence.

11. You will be acutely aware of the amount of water and electricity you consume; it is alarming.
12. Try leading double lives, or triple lives, even. Quadruple is pushing it.
13. You’re either vastly weird or painfully boring when alone. You’re going to learn this The Hard Way.
14. If you leave empty bottles from multiple cases of beer out, it can look like you just had an awesome party if you play your cards right.
15. You are not an adult, nor will you be any time in the foreseeable future. Embrace that.
16. Life without furniture builds character.
17. Is it cold enough to turn the heat on? How do you know?
18. Spice it up! Buy some candles.
19. Sandwiches. Actually, no, since I never buy bread as baguettes go stale too quickly. But I do eat a metric fuckton of pasta, crackers, sweet biscuits.

Edited from:

 http://www.autostraddle.com/listling-without-commentary-19-notable-things-about-living-alone-120055/

Vacation 1: Macca comes to Paris

Three or so, days ago I returned from Belgium and Amsterdam.

Best week's vacation ever.

Thursday, Macca knocks thuddingly on my door and we grin as we hug each other. It's good to see a familiar face. He's pretty dirty looking, but it's acceptable as he's come on a bus all the way from London.

He examines my walls decorated with mementos of things past, things I'd like to see and other aesthetically pleasing things. I grin again. We exchange well-beings and he tells me of his adventures, read luxury lifestyle, while his mother was visiting him in England.

While he showers, I double check the Lamington ingredients for tonight's international dinner and email the parentals again to let them know that I'm going to try to be as unsafe as possible and that I'll try to rent one of the windows in Amsterdam's red light district.

SoonBen and his friend from Aus., S. arrive. Ben is super excited to compare notes with Ian: he adores the fact that they left within days of each other. I watch on bemused and ask the instructions for the Lams.

I leave to purchase my Erasmus a Paris ticket for Amsterdam so that I can join them there in a weeks time. Ian and I have an interesting time trying to find Mouss (l'organisateur) near Grands Boulevards metro. Turns out he is in the nearest Quick; It's a fast-food chain.

We run back, to find that all the Lams are done and that they have also helpfully consumed 8 in the process. We have fun on the ride even though I forget to get off at the connecting station Belleville.

Such a plethora of food, it's a shame that my eyes are bigger than my stomach.

"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk"... although Zombie Shuffle is closer to it because Cafe Censier was packed.
I ended up cutting myself on some glass (Paris Glass Accident no #4) by brushing the underside of my annoyingly crunchy boots. Remind me not to do that again. I tried to ask for tweezers at the bar using the words pinceaux. I later realised at home that they looked confused because that actually means 'paintbrushes'.

I was going to crash a party with my belle italiane near Montparnasse, but I realised that I would be even more tired for my 9am class the next day (Mythology- worst class ever).


_________________________________________________________________________


Rising for class the next day was struggletown as I was trying to be really quiet. Unfortunately, I made a huge rackett trying to find my metro pass, which had fallen behind my bed. 


After class, I gobbled my 3,50EUR lunch, photocopied my passeport and then hurried to La Fontaine St. Michel jusqu'a quelques pas de la Notre Dame au centre de Paris to meet Ian for the English-Speaking tour. It was super, super-interesting.

We left early, and while I packed, I-dog cooked the eggs and lardons (french bacon cubes) in my frigo.

Galleini metro stop was our next port of call.
Being typically French, the ticket-guy questioned our non-printed out copy of our E-TICKETS!? N'avez-vous pas la capacite de comprendre le sens de E-TICKET?! Another W.T.F. (Welcome to France) moment.

Maccarena and I snacked on green-beans, tomatoes and apples on our way there, chatting like two ducks in a pond.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REVELATION: When you live in Paris, it's like the world doesn't exist. But when you leave, you realise that there is so much to discover. It's easier (more elegant) to express this sentiment in French.

Quand vous habitez a Paris, il est comme le monde n'existe pas. Mais quand vous sortez de Paris, il y a bien un monde. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Gent or Gant is beautiful. I love the coloured brick buildings with their canals and the quaint triangular frontages (s'il l'expression existe). Gent, Gent, I would like to raise children there so that they too, might be adorable and quaint.

We laughed at all the Dutch words and were particularly amused with one type of food available (you must ask me about it next time we talk). The map we had was useful if you weren't actually trying to find any of the highlights marked on it. It was a bit more like a cryptic crossword.

"So the Chocolate and Books shop is shown here on Leidenzjeilstraat!"

"Ahhh, that must means that you take two lefts at Grinjeilstraat, then turn 180 degrees at the Apotheek, give thanks to the Mystic Lamb (no joke, this exists) and then it will be directly opposite Rembrandtplein, just past the sewing bar."

We bought a 2EUR block of chocolade, and sat down contemplating the active brownie scouts in the square who were screaming at harmonic intervals. We concluded that they were anti-rape calls (although nobody was paying them any attention, so slightly ineffectual).

We re-pursued our search for the above attraction and in two minutes were sat down to sickeningly sweet Belgian hot chocolate and complimentary brownie bits at the back of the cozy parlor. Macca tinkled out the Australian National Anthem on the pianny there, and was promptly approached by a waitress who sweetly informed him that he was giving her a headache and would he kindly stop?

As we left, I laughing, he sheepish, we cursed them in yiddish and re-examined our map. The cheap bastards that we are we tried to find the Town Hall and the acclaimed Huge Lollipop also on our curious map. The Town Hall was inaccessible; the Huge Lollipop, a cruel lie destined to disappoint highly erudite culture-samplers like ourselves. We contented ourselves with finding a street full of shoes strung up over a high power-line and wondered how many Gent-ians were now walking around bare-footed because of it.

After exhausting most of the town's fine charms, such as a castle not far from our hostel which looked like those plastic Fischer-Price ones, we made the 1.5km journey over cobblestones (my shitty case amused itself by overturning at every opportunity) to the Train Station south of the city.

After observing a true Fat Controller who was a wearing a uniform that really accentuated his abundant sweaty curves we shot off to Brugges.

To be continued...