La semaine d'orientation

I have so much to say and so little time!!! We did a three and a half day tour of Bretagne that was amazing. We saw sooo much but it was absolutely exhausting! The farthest west region of France, Bretagne has a Celtic heritage and lots of fishing villages, beaches, etc. So we went to Irish pubs (not as an official part of the trip but...), went to a Fest Noz - cool dancing and music, kind of hard to pick up on, but I learned a Breton waltz, saw the farthest west point in France, la Pointe du Raz - awesome lighthouse and waves crashing against cliffs, ate delicious crèpes, and spent waaaay too much time in a hot, hot bus. France is having a strange heat wave right now, at least, in Normandy and Bretagne. It's so hot and humid and I really didn't bring that many summer clothes, but oh well!

Classes don't start at IES until next week and at the university, the week after that. This week we have intensive language sessions and a bunch of administrative junk. I always hate this part of these things. I can't wait until I have a routine, a regular schedule, activities... At the moment I don't quite know what to do with myself and it gives me time to be a little lonely and homesick. But I'm sure it will get better very soon.

Good news - we took our placement tests on Sunday and I thought it was really hard, but nonetheless, I got into the highest group! That was kind of exciting. My host mom was like, "ça ne me choque pas" - or, "I'm not surprised" - but I feel like such an idiot with my French most of the time that it did sort of surprise me. Talking to FX after I got back from Bretagne I had a really hard time, because all the IES students spoke English all weekend and I felt like I'd totally regressed. Then I knocked over a glass in his room, broke it, and spilled water on his English homework... I haven't been that embarrassed in a long time! I explained the word "klutz" and tried to have a sense of humor about it, but it just reminded me how awkward I feel all the time here - like a fish out of water! The French people are SO polite though. My host family thanked me so profusely for my silly gifts of chocolate and a picture book from Washington that I felt like I'd given them gold or something!

By the way, silly little fact: listening to French people try to say "turtle" has to be one of the funniest things ever. It comes out kind of like "Urr-rrghl". Great source of entertainment. Also reading the things FX has to translate into French was amusing... "Penelope was muffled up in a duffel coat." I was like, is that what you think we talk like??? (It's from some ancient British novel...) It made me laugh, though!