Dear Lord, I love the English language.

So. Today. C'etait pas mal. But it certainly wasn't good either.

Class lasted forever. FOREVER. We got there at ten and didn't leave until quarter of four, except for our hour-long lunch break. I went with five other people to a little café. They all got croque monsieurs, which looked delicious. (For those of you not familiar with French café food, a croque monsieur is a buttery ham sandwich with cheese melted on the top, served hot. It's probably the only sandwich you eat with a knife and fork.) I got a cheese sandwich. It was Swiss cheese, which is probably one of my least favorite cheeses, so that wasn't so great. But the bread was DELICIOUS. Toward the end I contemplated just eating the bread and leaving the cheese, but I didn't know if that would be some kind of terrible French faux pas. Oh, well.

After class, I went to the store (I forget the name, but it was a super-store type: clothes, groceries, cosmetics, stationary, etc.) to get notebooks and folders for class. After that, Amanda and Kelly and I went on an unsuccessful quest for chocolate. (I know, you're saying, unsuccessful? In France? How can that be? Well, I didn't want to pay like €4 for a piece of chocolate, that's how.)

I returned home, once again struggled with opening the front door, managed to open it this time, and gracelessly blundered into the apartment to find that there was company. I probably made a fantastic first impression, what with my hair all crazy from the strong wind and my face all red and sweaty from power-walking from the opposite end of the Presqu'île, but whatever. At any rate, I went to my room to do some work. That was, oh, four hours ago, and I still haven't managed to accomplish much in the way of homework. To be fair, some of that time was taken up by dinner. The company I mentioned earlier included three young kids who are staying here through next week. They're really cute, but they totally own me in terms of the French language. (Sorry, Nicole, if you're reading this. I know you hate that phrase - "in terms of" - and I totally didn't use it on purpose, I swear.) The oldest, Edgar, corrected me at dinner. It's depressing and inspiring at the same time - depressing because this nine-year-old speaks both French and English and can correct my French grammar, inspiring because if he can by bilingual at the age of nine, then by God, I can accomplish it at age 20.

The two girls are younger and SO CUTE. I was sitting in my room doing work and they came in to see me. Brune, the six-year-old, was enjoying making the cursor move on my laptop, and she was having a ball when I let her type letters onto my desktop stickies. (If you aren't familiar with Macs - hi, Mom - stickies are like virtual post-its on your desktop.) Anyway, Brune was loving that. She also seemed to enjoy asking me who the people were in the pictures on my desk. Meanwhile, Olympe (4) climbed right up next to me on the chair, and both girls recited their full names for me. It was adorable.

As far as improving my French goes, I'm still trying. At Corinne (my host mothers)'s suggestion, I write down new words every night - sometimes things I heard during the day, sometimes things I wanted to say but didn't know the words for, and sometimes things I just find while flipping through the dictionary. It's come in handy a couple times already, but my reading last night nearly doubled the size of the vocab list and I can't remember half of the words. Or, worse yet, I see a word and realize that I know what it means, but for the life of me, I can't remember. Of course, then I just look in my notebook again, so ce n'est pas grâve, I guess.

This weekend (Easter weekend), I'm traveling to the south of France with Kelly and Amanda, two other girls in my group. (Amanda is actually one of my sorority sisters; we were in the same pledge class.) It sounds like my family in the States will be having nicer weather, though - the forecasts for Arles and Avignon call for rain and temperatures in the 60s. Temp-wise, it's not bad, but the weather could be nicer. But the forecast has said rain for the past three days, and while it does rain hard at times, it's just cloudy for most of the time and sometimes the sun even comes out (sometimes at the same time as the rain, which is what happened this afternoon. I looked for a rainbow, but no luck.). Either way, it's gonna be roughly ten degrees warmer than Lyon, and I can definitely get on board with that.

Unfortunately, it's looking like pretty much all the hostels in Arles are booked up, what with it being a holiday weekend (a long weekend here in France - we get Easter Monday off. Hooray for Catholic countries!) and Arles being famous for its bullfights (particularly its Easter bullfights, I understand). We've got Friday and Saturday covered, but we still need one for Sunday night. Got any ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I'm not sure how I feel about the bullfights. It would be cool to see one, I guess, but I'm pretty sure I'm morally opposed to them. Plus, I don't want to make Amanda go by herself (Kelly's not sure she feels up to seeing the bullfights, either). But still, moral opposition is a pretty legitimate trump card, right? It's why I've gotten away with not trying any meaty food here.

Besides, Amanda says that the Arles bullfights don't kill the bull (which I definitely would not be able to handle), but still, the idea of antagonizing some animal just for fun...I don't know if it's something I can get behind/monetarily support (with my €16 admission fee).

Arg, it's 23:03 (11 pm). I should really get to work on my grammar homework and then go to sleep. As a reward for getting through another day without any major incidents, I'm going to allow myself to read one chapter of my book. I was reading 2-4 chapters a night, but I realized that at that rate I'm going to run out of fun (read: English) books really quickly. So one chapter it is. I doubt I'll stick with it. I was thinking of maybe trying to find a French translation of a familiar English book in a librairie (here, a librairie is a bookstore and a bibliothèque is a library) and reading that. It would be educational but kind of fun, since I'd already have a basic idea of what I was reading and I wouldn't be getting graded on it.

And my English books are pretty much the only bedtime chill-out activity I have these days. Journal-writing is more of an exercise than a relaxing activity now that I'm journaling in French, and it takes me so long to look things up in the dictionary (yes, I'm old-school, no online-translator journaling for me - I learn better this way) that by the time I've done all the set-up for the anecdote I'm about to tell, I'm too tired (lazy?) to finish up. And then I proceed to read four chapters of my book. Bof.

Anyway, that's why I'm really liking the blog right about now. It's a nice outlet for my feelings/thoughts and a good record of my time in Lyon (more dependable than my journal, considering how terrible my French is). But now I really need to get to work, since there's only an hour left in the day and I still have some grammar work to do. (It's not a heck of a lot, but I should probably get started on my Thursday reading as well. And we still have to find a hostel for Sunday night. And I need to get back to Amanda about the bullfighting. Argggg, too much to do, too little time!!!)