Je ne comprends pas

I had a dream that when people spoke I understood them. It was a great dream.

Thursday June 10 - Friday June 11

In lieu of a test on Friday most of my Thursday was spent studying or in activities. Class happened as usual, I came home to study in our 1hr break but fell asleep. Our afternoon activity was quite great. They organized a scavenger hunt in the downtown area for us. We were split into groups of five with someone from each level. This was nice. We walked downtown and spent 2 hours looking for the numerous things on our list to take pictures with.

It was a great activity because it was the first opportunity I had in almost 2 weeks to get downtown during the day to get a feel for this city. It was nice and surprisingly somewhat busy. It is a cute little downtown area. I even ran into a friend of a friend - accidentally. If I can get my hands on some of the great pictures I'll post them, but they were not taken on my camera.

The only problem I had with this activity is that we weren't told we would be out for over two hours walking around. I had left my wallet so couldn't get water and I was thirsty and tired by the time I got home. Upon arriving home I attempted to study again but fell asleep, again. This place is exhausting. The weather was great though, warm and sunny :)

We then had dinner and headed to our evening activity - a choice between soccer-baseball or tea. Although I love soccer-murder-baseball I needed to study more so I went to tea with my que cards in hand and studied for an hour until we were allowed to leave. On a different note seemingly I'm the only one out here who has ever heard of soccer-murder-baseball (or murderball if you like). When I mentioned it I got many strange looks. This seems to happen from variations in coast to coast. I guess they played with a real soccer ball so there was no dodgeball component making it appropriate to leave out the murder part.

I came home and studied until my brain gave up on me, then I went to bed. The days here are so packed that I've had little time to study and I'm beginning to be discouraged. They allot about 4 hours free time during the day which usually ends up closer to 2 hours when eating and walking are accounted for. After our evening activities there is usually little time because getting up between 6-6:30am is exhausting. This means I don't really have time to study and although I am learning words and terms I am finding it impossible to actually speak or string together broken sentences.

Friday June 11

Woke up early and studied before my test. I think it went ok. Not great but not awful. After that we went for lunch and because it was so nice out this afternoon (25+) a few of us played some frisbee, others just laid in the sun. It was quite nice. Our afternoon activity was spread out depending on what level you were in. The level ones and twos got to go to the Acadian Museum first, which was good because it gave me a bigger block of time between it ending and dinner starting. The museum looked great but I couldn't tell you anything about it because the entire tour was in French.

After the activity I walked towards downtown to find a convenience store in order to buy a lotto ticket. I'm not huge on the lotto, ya, I play it sometimes but usually it seems like more of a waste. Well this time the pot is $50mil with 20 $1mil extra prizes. Who knows, maybe magic will happen. When I got back to res my initial plan was to sleep for an hour, go for a swim, and eat dinner in time to attend our 6:30 activity in the evening. What actually happened was quite different. I slept for almost 3 hours and missed dinner. I woke up in time to go to our evening activity of reading the poems we wrote earlier in the week. My group member and I decided it would be best to keep ours to ourselves and although some of them seemed quite funny I don't know what they were about. I was half asleep anyways.

Upon returning to res we played a little ping-pong, I ordered a pizza because there is nothing close to walk to, and we watched The Last King of Scotland (in English with French subtitles). It was great. Based on true events in Uganda looking at the corruption of the government from the perspective of a young doctor from Scotland. It was shocking and powerful. I recommend it, although it was quite graphic.

Lately the monitors have been really intense with the French only rule and have been handing out warnings. As I understand it you get about 3 warnings before you are asked to leave.

At this point I'm not sure if I might not just ask to leave. I've been fighting this battle of "I'm not a quitter, and this is a really great thing to learn" against the "this isn't what I expected, not what I wanted, and more stressful than I need." I'm starting to think that being a quitter can be a good thing. Of course you don't want to quit for no reason, or because something was hard and you weren't willing to put the work in, but if you've balanced your pros and cons and what you are putting in is more than you are getting out, perhaps it is time to pack your bags and move into a hostel for the rest of the month. I don't want to leave but I also don't want to stay. I really enjoy the people I'm here with, and I even really enjoy the class even though I feel like I am way behind everyone else. I just simply have no personal time to do anything like explore this atlantic side of Canada. At the same time I've already been here for two weeks so what is 2 and a half more? Well sometimes it feels like nothing and other times it feels like an eternity. Sometimes I wonder why I wanted to learn French in the first place, besides that I think it would be cool. Well, I'm not saying that I'm going to leave early, I'll just say that I dream about it at night. ha. I'd like to think that being a quitter doesn't necessarily make you weak, sometimes it might make you smart? You know, not wasting your time doing something you hate... Well that's how I like to look at it right now.

Today I learned:

• Even though you were in Mexico for a month and didn't burn does not mean you can walk around outside without sunscreen in Canada and not burn. My shoulders are rosy.
• Lotto Max has Twist and Tag - which as far as I can tell is like the Extra - who knew?
• Out here they call a 2-6 of hard alcohol a quart, in Ontario they call it a 2-6er

I am grateful for:

• Naps
• Birkenstocks - why did I never purchase them before?
• Movies that elicit a physical reaction, you know it is good then