Call My Adventure Journal Boring, Eh?

Okay, so here are interesting things.

On Thursday, I started my first real class with French students and a French professor not gently selected by the University to care and nurture us poor Americans. This first class that I had was... geomorphology. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it frightened me. I don't know if I will continue with the class (but probably I will, because I only need the equivalent of a C+ to get an A). I have a week to learn what a 'geological cut' is, and be able to draw one for part of Montpellier (I think I know what it is, but...). The words for rocks are completely different in French than in English. For example, limestone is calcaire. Luckily, there is a LOT of calcaire in the region, so I don't need to figure out what granite or shale or basalt or sandstone are. Yet. On the plus side, taking an upper division geography/geology course can only burnish my résumé. And, I might learn a thing or two.

After geomorphology, I had the much easier French phonetics course taught by Madame Barféty (the one who reminds me of Mrs. Hamline from 4th grade). I am now learning the International Phonetic Alphabet! Yay! We learned about aspirated and muted H's on Thursday, which Mme. Barféty told us was more or less useless in French since they don't know how to pronounce the H sound anyways. Silly French.

My host family has been yelling at one another with more and more frequency lately, and so that has given me great impetus to leave the house. This weekend, I am going to Nîmes to watch the Féria, which is the annual bullfighting competition and associated fête. Should be fun. I also bought by 12-25 train card, which gives me at least 25% off all train voyages in France, and if I buy things far enough in advance, up to 60% off. So, also Yay! In unrelated news, I discovered that my friend Ping knows what 4chan is. I hope to God none of you do, except for Brian, Emilio, Dave and all other gamenight friends. I was greatly amused. Also, there was a beggar sitting on the side of one of the main pedestrian streets today holding up a sign that said "Money to be used only for drugs and alcohol" in French and on the other side English. I tried to take a picture, but my batteries were dead. When I told him such, he said, "Oh, no worries. Mine are dead too!" and pointed to his head with a toothless smile. I also saw the Virgin Mary appear before me in a shroud and point to the summit of the hill nearby, and I knew in that moment that I must build a great cathedral to Our Lady. Alas, my camera still being out of juice, she vanished into the ether and I remembered I'm not Catholic.

Please do not worry about the financial crisis, as anything any of you do pertaining removing assets from the market will only make the dollar devalue more and make it harder for me to buy the things I need, like wine and chocolate.