sunshine and birdsong
the sun came back today. it's been incredibly gorgeous outside this afternoon; which conveniently coincided with today being a national holiday [rolls eyes]. i still can't get over the fact that bizzare liturgical holidays (good friday?) are sanctioned by the government as bank holidays here.
went running again; farther this time, but still not so much. i feel like i'm gaining weight again, and i don't know what to do about it. i try as hard as i can, but it often seems like nothing ever helps.
the birds were out in full force, chirping their chirps and squawking their squawks and in general just giving the impression that they somehow have a hell of a lot to talk to each other about. i wonder what they talk about. it seems silly that they would bother to make that much noise and not be transmitting any information.
last night, daniel defended his thesis, and graduated---yay him! i hope i get to that point someday. yeah, i know it's pretty likely that i will [knock on wood], but somehow it still seems an awfully long way off.
he also threw a big party afterwards, and i helped run the barbeque with gilles and mikel. it was a very nice evening, even if i probably ate (and of more immediate relevance, drank) a little more than could be easily considered prudent. i stayed to help them clean up, and we didn't get out of there until nearly 3:30am, so after walking home (the busses stop at midnight; walking took about an hour), i was all but dead on my feet. this brings us back to the fact that even though i don't understand _why_ today is a national holiday, i still very much appreciate that it _is_. :)
one last sidenote: i'm slowly succeeding in converting people to speaking with me in french. it's still not a particularly efficient method of communication (my fault), but some of them are finally catching on that i do really want to learn. for instance, jean-christophe and fred will now consistently speak to me in french, and even give second explanations in french when i look confused, rather than immediately falling back to english, like everyone else. i suppose i shouldn't be too hard on daniel, seeing as it was his night and all, but he's probably the worst about this kind of thing. no matter what i say to him, he always responds in english; even if i continue in french, he persists in english. this makes for a reasonably bizarre spectacle (a dual language conversation with neither of us speaking our native language).
2 Comments:
I can relate to the weight gain, brother. I drink too much beer. And recently, my Japanese lesson has clashed with soccer practice and basketball has been on hiatus for several weeks. So I am carrying around a spare tire that is unneccessary and annoying. I enjoyed reading about your other struggle, trying to get people to speak to you in French. My struggle is not to get people to speak to me in Japanese, but to get them to speak to ME in Japanese. Almost everyone assumes that I speak very little to no Japanese and so I also understand very little. So people talk about me all the time, and no matter how many times I interupt the conversation or say something to make it clear that I know what they are talking about, the stereotype is too strong to be easily overcome. So people still constantly say things right beside me like, well, what do you think Steve wants to do for lunch? Should we invite him to the restaurant with us? Maybe he wants to eat at home? First of all, my name bridges language barriers, you fools. So it`s pretty easy to know when people are talking about you. Secondly, how many times can you continue to be surprised that I know what you're talking about? It's lame.
wow. that sounds irritating as all hell. and yet i can't help laughing my ass off that they could be so monumentally stupid---they actually use your name!?!?! that's hilarious. where by hilarious, i mean incredibly, incredibly sad. sorry, dude. that's gotta suck. luckily, i haven't really found myself in that position (well, at least not more than once or twice), despite being paranoid enough that such a thing might happen to actually learn and practice phrases such as "just because i can't speak doesn't mean i understand *nothing* of what you say," and "do you really think i can't hear you, or what?" (it sounds like a dumb stunt from a cheesy movie, but i actually did stand in front of the mirror, trying to make sure that i could make it sound right while simultaneously presenting a face that was appropriately menacing. [smirk])
haha. those fools. wow.
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