Day 3 Report

This morning was Mr Stephan's turn to drive me to school.

We spent most of the first half of class translating our idioms, which took up so much time because we kept digressing. For example, there was an idiom about a frog and the teacher started talking about frog's legs being a strange delicacy of the French (so tourists think) and we tried explaining that they are a Chinese delicacy too.

After our break we did an activity whereby someone would say a noun or verb, and the next person would say the first thing that came to mind, and so on and so forth. The words started to get very random, so when we ended the game and restarted, the teacher made us explain our choice of words. It ended up like "fly (the insect) --> fly (the verb) --> steal (because voler means both 'to fly' and 'to steal' in French) --> car --> accident (my word) --> hospital --> doctor --> operate".

Lunch was a choice of some pork wrap or fish quiche. I had the quiche with a generous serving of fries. Denise and I hadn't been informed of our afternoon activities but the other three New Arrivals had. Apparently, it was blogging. According to the other students, they have blogging activities twice a week - and they usually skip it. Whilst all of us waited in the reception area, the Big Group discussed their afternoon plans (visiting some museum I think). Then they left and Laetitia appeared. She led us through some corridors behind our classroom (corridors that I didn't know existed) to the computer lab.

We had to create accounts on the CIEL website and blog 150-180 words about ourselves and our host family. The French keyboard is sooooo annoying (especially if you touchtype) - some of the keys like A and Q are swapped, whilst I can never find M. And the symbol keys are completely different because keys are needed for stuff like é and ç.

I managed 188 words on myself, why I want to learn French, how my time here has been so far, and my host family. Laetitia went around correcting all our grammatical mistakes. Here's my post:

Bonjour tout le monde! Je m'appelle Jessica Yeo et j'ai vingt-et-un ans. J'habite à Singapour: Je viens de finir ma première année à l'Université National de Singapour, où je suis étudiante en histoire. J'apprends le français parce que je trouve que la langue français est très belle. Aussi, je voudrais apprendre la culture et l'histoire de France. Ma famille d'accueil s'appellent les Stephan. Je pense qu'ils ont de la chance parce qu'ils habitent près de la mer! Les Stephan aiment les fleurs et ils ont un grand jardin. Il y a beaucoup de fleurs dans leur jardin. C'est très jolie! La famille n'ont pas des chiens et des chats, mais ils ont quatre perroquets - trois perroquets gris et un perroquet vert. Les perroquets sont très bavardent! Mais ils sont très polis aussi parce qu'ils disent souvent "Bonsoir!". Je suis arrivée à Brest il y a trois jours. Je reste ici pour trois semaines. Jusqu'ici, il faissait très beau et j'aime bien Brest. Je trouve que mon cours à CIEL est intéressant et le professeur est très amusant aussi. Si seulement mon cours français à Singapour était comme ici!

And a translation, of course:

"Hello everyone! My name is Jessica Yeo and I am 21 years old. I live in Singapore: I just finished my first year at the National University of Singapore, where I am a history student. I am learning French because I find the French language very beautiful. Also, I would like to learn the culture and history of France. My host family is the Stephans. I think that they are lucky because they live near the sea! The Stephans love flowers and they have a big garden. There are many flowers in their garden. It is very pretty! The family does not have dogs and cats, but they have four parrots - three grey parrots and one green parrot. The parrots are very noisy! But they are very polite also because they often say Bonsoir. I arrived in Brest three days ago. I am staying here for three weeks. Until now, the weather has been very good and I like Brest. I find that my course at CIEL is interesting and the teacher is very funny too. If only my French class in Singapore was like this!"

The five of us left at 3.15 p.m. for the bus stop, where we just missed the bus and had to wait for 20 min - on top of the 45 min it takes to reach Brest. There we split up - Denise and I made a beeline for H&M.

We spent almost all our time in H&M, except for maybe 5 or 10 min in the shop beside it after we left. By the time we exited the shopping centre we were running late for the 6.10 p.m. bus. There was no bus waiting at the stop so we thought we had missed it, but two of the girls were there and said that they had been waiting for some time. The late bus arrived not long after.

I had a much more pleasant walk home. Firstly, I knew the way home. :P Secondly, unlike yesterday the sun was shining on my back and there was a nice breeze blowing in my face. I was very surprised when I reached Rue de la Rade so quickly; all in all it took like 13 min to walk home.

I had just enough time to tidy up and take stock of my purchases, before it was time for dinner. We had a large slice of rock melon before proceeding to the main course of bowtie pasta in tomato-based sauce, some lettuce, and a big fat fluffy onion omelette. Dessert was nine strawberries and sugar, during which I learnt that the lettuce and strawberries came from the garden. I also learnt that the surrounding neighbours have lots of cats (because I told everyone I saw a furry black cat slinking about in the garden before dinner!).

Then, as usual, it was bathtime followed by journal-time. I am particularly tired today, not really from shopping itself but because I returned too late to have a pre-dinner nap. Yawn. Tomorrow afternoon we have a mini-excursion to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest. According to my brochure, the museum houses Flemish, Italian and French paintings from the 17th to 20th centuries.