Thursdays in Rennes

Today I correctly set my French cellphone alarm clock to 6:56AM and bounded* out of bed for my 8h15 class on writing French. Like a true city girl, I took the subway to get there. In class we talked in very general and concrete terms about what characterizes a narrative and then read a few selections of things that were strangely enough not narratives. It is interesting to be in a class of French language learners whose first language is not English. I never thought how much English influences my approach to French, but there it was staring me in the face. The French words "narratif" "crétain" " chronologie"were giving people fits; I have more trouble with really understanding why the author chose the grammar he/she did. 

King of the garden

My English to French translation class was a different animal. French students have been taking their classes since September and this one I waltzed in on for second semester. I arrived without the documents and spent class piecing together the English original as well as the French from stuff I pulled out of the air. My head was spinning. The professor however was really passionate about emotion in langauge and had all sorts of interesting insights on the differences between English and French. English is apparently very dense and very succinct. The French like to explain things. This cleared up for me why the French I had to translate in my other French to English translation class was so full of untranslatable run-on sentences. When you go French to English ( which is infinitely easier for me) you essentially try to find ways to get rid of commas. I gotta learn to write with all of the commas too.

Gate number one

Under the camellia

Other areas I need to work on: lunch time. Today was day two in the Restaurant Universitaire that I can honestly say I had no idea what I was eating. In cases like these it is always some white starchy thing that while unrecognizable has a pleasant enough flavor. Time the first it was salt, and this time it was nugmeg. Fake potato?? Maybe?? But why would that be piped accross a ham filled croissant like icing? St. Olaf cafeteria has me spoiled!