Quick update

Hi! I've not posted for a while, so I thought I'd give you a quick update. Why haven't I posted? A variety of reasons, including a cold that hasn't been strong enough to put me out of action, but has been enough to make life miserable. Also we've been perhaps a little fed up. Still, we knew it would happen and forewarned is forearmed!

What can I tell you?

Well, we have now been at the DEFLE for three weeks. I am contemplating trying to get my money back because we are STILL not fluent. I'm fluent in listening now - what I mean is that I don't translate from French into English in my head. You can't anyway - our Contemporary History class is two hours of monologue! In fact this morning while our lecturer was taking us through the Louis' and Versailles and all that (we've got to about 1750), I became aware that I was following him in French and thinking down sidepaths in English. A bit weird, but again, OK if you don't think about it.

Highlights of the week?

I did a compte rendu. Yes! I did one! A text on the way philosophers invent jargon contracted to 25 words. And I volunteered to read it out. The lecturer's comment was "pas mal", which I took as high praise.

In phonetics I got a hopeless case of the giggles. It's the lecturer! Last week she had us doing orthographic transcription on this passage with the names of Eskimo tribes. (We were all a bit cowed so we didn't smell a rat at first.) This week the transcription was about a Finnish team that have old ladies rocking in rocking chairs for 1/2 hour a day to stave off dangerous falls. Honestly. She started the lesson by threatening to make us sing "Bonjour voisin, bonjour voisine" to each other. Then she had us working on nasal vowels and she made this Vietnamese chap hold his nose to feel it vibrate while he said "an, on, in, un".

Someone on the course wants to come to church. Not someone I have spoken to - well we work on a team together, but we haven't spoken about the gospel as such as far as I remember. But they asked me what church I went to and said they want to come too. They're planning on coming next Sunday evening with a friend. Pray they do.

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