Today's rambling: Mon histoire
Written on Wednesday, Feb. 05, 2003 at 7:23 p.m.
while feeling a bit

I told Mel that I could no longer work on Mondays and Wednesdays. It would be one thing if the radio was my only job and I didn't have classes and such as well, but 5 days of 4:30 wake-ups PLUS classes PLUS homework equals Exhausted Berry. And that's just a sad, sad sight. So as much as it bothered me to break down and say I couldn't work Mondays and Wednesdays (the days I have Health), I know it'll make me a lot less stressed in the end. "Primary prevention," that's what my Health professor taught me! :P

Our first test in Humanities is on Friday, as is our first test in French. I'm a bit more confident in French than Humanities, since I've actually been studying for the former. *giggles* What can I say? Humanities just bores me and I wouldn't even be taking it if it weren't required!

But speaking of French...We had to write an essay today. Well, it was called an essay but it was actually just a little paragraph. We had to use depuis, pendant, il y a, and then use three of the new verbs we just learned. Of course, I couldn't just stick with something like "See Spot run. See Dick run after Spot." So I wrote this wee story about Paul and Marie, two of the drawing people in our book. :P Weird story associated with that one...last semester I'd done the wrong assignment, and instead of doing whatever it was I had to do, I did this exercise where you write what "Marie" and "Paul" were doing in each picture. By the end, I had turned it into a story, and so I decided that I'd elaborate on that for my essay. So, it turned into this (French first, then the translation, hee hee):

Marie est la petite amie de Paul, qui aime danser beaucoup. Elle est tr�s intelligente, et il est assez fou. Elle habite avec lui depuis deux ans, mais il y a quatre mois ils ont eu un probl�me. Paul a dit, "Tu as lu ce livre toujours! Hier soir, tu l'as lu pendant trois heures! Je veux danser! Tu est ennuyeux!" Pour cette raison, Marie a d�cid� de partir. Paul a attendu Marie pendant plusieurs jours, mais elle n'est pas revenue. Mais, un jour, elle est retourn�e!

"Je n'aime pas danser," elle a dit.
"Et je n'aime pas lire," il a r�pondu.
"Mais je t'aime!"

"Tu as perdu ton billet, n'est-ce pas?" Paul a rit.

Marie n'a rien dit, et Paul a rit encore.

"Je t'aime aussi, Marie!"

Et voil� l'histoire de Paul et Marie.

Okay. To anyone who actually KNOWS French, I'm sure there were a plethora of mistakes there. But anyway, here's how it's supposed to be translated, hehe...and I only put it in French because I know some people *coughCaseycough* are also taking French. :P

Marie is the girlfriend of Paul, who likes to dance a lot. (Note: Ah crap, I just realized that grammatically, I have it written to sound like MARIE is the one who likes to dance! Ah well.) She is very intelligent, and he's kinda crazy. She's lived with him for 2 years, but 4 months ago they had a problem. Paul said, "You read that book all the time! Last night, you read it for three hours! I want to dance! You're boring!" For that reason, Marie decided to leave. Paul waited for Marie for several days, but she didn't come back. But, one day, she returned!

"I don't like to dance," she said.

"And I don't like to read," he responded.

"But I love you!"

"You lost your ticket, didn't you?" Paul laughed.

Marie didn't say anything, and Paul laughed again.

"I love you too, Marie!"

And there is the story of Paul and Marie.

La di da di daaaa.....yeah, so that was my story. Lots of unadulterated fun, no? *giggles* Anyway, I wrote it out last night and then memorized it, which was probably cheating, technically, but that's what EVERYONE did. So blah blah, later in that class (after finishing up the little section on Le Petit Prince! *squeal*), as a review for our test on Friday the professor told us to get in groups of two and practice with the vocabulary at the end of the chapter. It was all stuff about vacations and traveling and suchlike. Miranda and I grouped up, which is an explosive sort of mix because we always end up laughing hysterically by the end. We don't try to make up serious stuff; instead, we use the vocabulary and all but we make up really wacky stories. For example, when I asked her where she spent her vacation she was like, "I spent my vacation in Iraq!"

This was all so much more amusing in French. Anyway, we were both cracking up, especially when I asked if she went fishing and she said she did..with bin Laden. She wanted to know how to say "I drowned him," but we couldn't figure that one out. The professor had come by at the beginning to see what we were saying, and she started laughing at the bit about Iraq, too. Told us the word for fighting (as in, "The US fought Iraq"), but I don't remember it anymore. Something that was reflexive...I'll skip the part where I described my conversation, except to say that I kept including "avec la baignoire" ("with the bathtub") a lot. :P There were just too many inside jokes for it to make sense to anyone else.

About two minutes before the end of class the professor asked if a pair would volunteer to say their little things in front of everyone. Of course, no one volunteered...so she volunteered Miranda and I. X_X Miranda told her story, but no one really seemed interested...and after class, when we were studying at the library, Miranda voiced what I'd been thinking for several days: the students in that class just don't like us. They're mostly females, for starters, and the really catty, superficial, snooty kind besides. I'm not saying that just because they don't like us, either...I mean, I couldn't care one way or the other if they like me because I didn't like them from last semester, LOL!

It just irritates me that they don't like us just because we actually have an idea of what we're doing in that class. I mean, I was jealous last semester when our other French professor told Miranda that she should have been put in level 3 rather than 2, but that just pushed me to work harder! And now Miranda keeps trying to say that I'm smarter than her with French, hehe, so I guess we're even. ;) But these girls...why is it such a terrible thing to have FUN in a class? And yeah, I won't even try to deny that I know more than virtually everyone on "that side" of the room (Miranda, John, Emily and I sit on one side, so "the other side" is theirs, hehe), but that doesn't mean they couldn't try to improve! Honestly, I'm not sure half of them will even pass this course. Not because they're COMPLETELY stupid or something, but because this is an intensive course and a lot of them are still struggling with stuff we learned last semester. One girl actually came up to Miranda and I before class today and asked us a question about her essay, and I was kinda taken aback. Before today, I didn't really think anyone thought of Miranda and I as being 'smart ones'. We don't raise our hands and participate very much in class...and sure, we go up to the board and such, but that's because everyone's forced to do so at least once a day. Still, it was kind of a neat thing, being recognized for smartness. ;) Maybe one day I'll be asked if I can tutor folks in French. *laughs* I'd have to refuse, though, because I don't have teaching skills!

The professor even complimented my pale blue, iridescent nailpolish. :P I guess maybe she likes me, hehe...But I'm still afraid to see what she says about my essay tomorrow! I wrote more than I needed to, and it was like this whole story! And I had no intentions of showing off when I wrote it; I just can't bring myself to write like a 5-year old. Not that the story I wrote was anything that would be put on the New York Times Bestseller list or anything, but some of the girls in class were asking if their sentences had to all connect to one another coherently! X_X

Okay. I'm going to go find out if someone stole my shower stall. Actually, it's my 'new' shower stall, since everyone's been using my old one and now it's always really gross and hairy and dirty whenever I want to use it. Bastards. Can't you go use some OTHER shower?? I swear people like to follow me around...