Day 5 Report

Tonight I butchered the French language.

It was the Big Group's last day at CIEL so lessons (for my group at least) seemed more relaxed. We played two games, the first being tic-tac-toe with pronouns. My group won, thanks to my timely contribution. :P

The second game was much longer. We had to write the names of five famous people on five slips of paper, then drop them in a box. Working in pairs, one of us drew names out of the box and described the person on the card, whilst the other one tried to guess the person's name. After two rounds, Denise and I had by far the lowest points in the class!

We thought that was the end of the game, but there was a third round. Our teacher said we were only allowed to use one word to describe the celebrity. He took away most of the duplicate cards (there were quite a few Obamas) and Denise and I started as usual (because we sit at the end of the row). By this time I had paid enough attention to remember most of the names in the box, so I managed to guess nine correct and we suddenly sped into the lead.

In the final round we were only allowed to use gestures. This was when the game became hilarious as people tried gesturing "Johnny Depp" and "Elvis Presley". The game reached its climax when one girl jabbed her finger in the air and her partner was like, "Erm...Saturday Night Fever???" It turned out that the person on the card was Hitler and she had been trying to do the Hitler salute!

In the end we tied for the highest score - not like there was any prize. :P Class ended soon after and we all went to the courtyard to takes pictures, during which everyone shouted "Fromage!" instead of "Cheese!".

Lunch was very quiet because most of the students disappeared right after that. Denise and I tried out our microwaveable meals: I loved my spaghetti bolognaise but apparently her sweet and sour pork rice didn't taste so great.

After that we enquired about tomorrow's excursion at the counter, and finally received our three-week timetable. We will be going to the town of Quimper tomorrow and the island of Ouessant next Saturday.

Anyway, we surfed the Net for a while before leaving for Brest.

Within the next 3.5 hours or so, I bought some henleys at New Look (which was having a storewide 20% discount) and track pants at H&M (I can't stand the capris I brought along), and tried on many pairs of shoes (unlike lousy Singapore, the sample size here is usually 39 and not 36/37) but didn't buy any. I also found a very nice and reasonably-priced homewares store, and did grocery-shopping: biscuit bars for school breaks, microwaveable meals for school lunches, and traditional biscuits that Sam requested.

Then we missed the 6.30 p.m. bus. The next bus was at 6.50 p.m., which was all very well for Denise, but I was panicking throughout the journey. When I got off I walked as briskly as I possibly could with my shopping bags on an uphill route. Thankfully, I managed to get back 10 min before dinner. :P

Dinner was half a grapefruit and carbonara pasta, whilst dessert was more flan with biscuits.

The conversation was particularly animated, with discussions mostly on travelling, Breton museums, which museums I'm planning to visit in Paris, and, er, flowers. Travel talk took up most of the time; we talked about visiting Beijing and Cape Town in particular. I impressed even myself by recalling the name of Cape Town's botanic gardens - despite the fact that I read it 8 years ago and didn't even visit it!

...Although to be honest I was hoping to use South Africa as a conversation topic ever since I noticed a Lonely Planet guidebook on their bookshelf (which is right behind where I sit at dinner). :P

Someone had left a brochure on some art museum on the table, and we talked about it before we turned to the bookcase and Mrs Stephan showed me her collection of art books. Then I "noticed" (having noticed loooooooong ago actually) that they had quite a few books on flowers in Chinese, and pointed that out. It finally led to Mrs Stephan showing me a thick book on flowers in the Himalayas (which she thought was in Chinese but was actually in Japanese - not that that made any difference to her). And boy are there many flowers in the Himalayas!!! There were lots of weird flowers that didn't even look like flowers, and I noticed a lot of the flowers were bluish-purple. It seems the Stephans had climbed the Himalayas JUST TO SEE FLOWERS, and Mrs Stephan pointed out those she had seen on her trip.

Obviously, this digression took up a lot of time and my bathtime was pushed back. Also, as I already stated, I completely butchered the language. I mean, my oral grammar is usually rubbish in the first place, but this time I was jumbling up all my conjugaisons and messing up my past tenses and using phrases that were grammatically incorrect. Yeah well at least the conversation wasn't stilted. :P