Waking up early on Sundays sucks, because of the obviousness that there is nothing open, to do, or to see. If I had some DVDs in my room I would have watched them, but I coudln’t sleep because the God Forsaken Cathedral and churches were ringing their bells all morning: literally. It should be sacrelidge or something along those lines, but I guess it doesn’t matter becasue most French people are devoutly religious (at least a little bit), and the rest are students that are at home and therefore aren’t bothered by church bells ringing all bloody day.
So what did I do? I layed and existed for about 1 hour until I couldn’t take it anymore and I resigned myself to the fact that I had to do my homework and I might as well do it since all my bloody classes are on Monday & Tuesday. First was the grammar stuff, which was easy as anything since it’s just relative pronouns so I just have to fill in the blanks, but one of the exercises was completely pointless and I am going to ask my professor about it since I don’t understand the purpose or meaning of any of the sentances. A sentance like: “Vous trouvez cette jeune fille charmante dont la gaiété et la bonne heumeur vous séuisent” means as much to me as “Don’t drink your glass too quickly of which weight would be added to me for walking downtown.” The latter means absolutely nothing to me, but it’s the translation of one of the setnances. Note to self: question teacher about what the hell it means and why it’s so pointless.
After the boring grammar stuff, I moved on to XIXe Century Literature; more specifically Émile Zola, considering that we are studying naturalism for the semester. Sounds like a bore, and reading excerpts from the book was even worse since 1) it’s all technical terms and 2) becasue it’s in a style of French that is just boring to read. Really I tried; but it was brutal. So I took notes and highlighted key parts and such in hopes that it will impress our teacher who can’t be much older than we are; odly.
Following that came more comprehension stuff about synthesis of sources on the topic of technologically advanced clothing. If that’s not way out there, then I don’t know what is! Well I can think of a few things, but we won’t get into that right now… I don’t really know what the teacher expects us to do, but considering I’m in a class of Asians who can’t pronounce anything in French that she can understand, I am in a good boat for her explaining more clearly. If only the Japanese and Chinese people could say letters like ‘l’ or ‘r’ it would make things easier since half the time they open their mouths it’s a struggle worse than life itself.
French Philosophy readings weren’t too bad, since it’s about Descartes and is basically just a biography about him. Interesting and random fact: he had an academic relationship with Queen Christine of Sweden, where he ended up dying in 1650. That’s a hell of a long time ago, which makes me sort of yawn but the professor is so nice and he loves us Mt. Allison students because he’s a good friend of Alex Fancy, and therefore he favours us, or maybe it’s just becasue we sit in the front row and are the only ones taking notes and such. Mental note: Nic is probably going to ask for notes in that class, so I have to remember to photocopy them for him.
Rounding things up was more comprehension stuff from the most annoying and stupid text book in the history of the French langauge. It’s not as tedious and annoying as “En Avant la Grammaire” but it’s pretty close becasue the article we read about was about a French student who is at a university in Virginia and doesn’t understand social customs. The questions are asking me to describe social customs from where we are from, and explain the ‘rites of passage’ for students in university. I just can’t be assed to do it becasue it’s a stupid exercise, but I figure I have Monday night to do that since the class is on Tuesday, but the stuff might only be due for Thursday – we shall see.
And so now I’m sitting here, but not before I went for a walk just for the sake of going for a walk. The city is pretty skethcy on Sundays, just because there is nobody around; which makes me increasingly more suspicious to what actually goes on in this country. Weird people, weird social norms, and weird hours of operation. Apart from that there is a girl across the courtyard who I think s German and she has been working literally all weekend non-stop. Always sitting at her desk doing writing or something, which I would kill myself if I were in that position. It doesn’t make sense, especially if she’s a French student because I would only imagine someone in the books that much that didn’t understand French (but even I don’t spend that much time in the same books or with work!!). Nevertheless she keeps working and doing random stuff, and it seems that were are the only two left in the residence, except for the skethcy Croatian / Russian black guy who lives around the corner. He’s always playing loud music, and I’m waiting for the time that he goes to tell someone to shut up and then they yell at him for 1) always being noisy and 2) speaking like he’s African, when really he’s Croatian. I have nothing against the way Franco-Africans talk, just I can’t understand what the hell they are saying. It’s just like the Franco-Moroccans, who have their own French dialect that is barely comprehendable.
Apart from all the boringness I was reading this book that I got before coming here called “Labyrinth” which is apparently a best-seller these days. And it was actually interesting for a few chapters, but in all honesty I was only reading it because I had nothing else to bother doing. It was in the middle of some romantic fling that I didn’t remember about, but the whole switching time and space in random intervals is confing me, so I took a nap to kill the time. Nobody has come back from Switzerland / Paris, so I’m bored and lonely in my room and hungry so I think I will have some yoghurt, or maybe make some pasta to suffice my famishednessly. See how bored I am; I just invented a totally rad new world, oh golly-gee-willigars now I’m talking like Nic and his Californian lingo ‘rad’ ‘solid’ ‘rockin’. *shudders*
While we are on the topic of Nic, he never called, the bastard so I will just complain to him tomorrow in class (or not) but really after sleeping I started to put things into perspective, as in there is nothing to be put into persepective becasue I’m just an over-analytical-cynical-paranoid teenager guy who can’t be bothered to just take things as they are at face value. I really gotta work on that one, obviously!!