Rochefort

Oh dear. How am I going to keep things around here "updated" if I don't keep up with what I do, when I do it, etc.

Last weekend was really nice. I went to the Sunday market with some friends and we had a nice picnic. It's been wicked cold here, the type of cold that hurts your hands and makes you want another sweater, even when you're already wearing three. Lucy's mom was here last week, and it was really a treat to get to meet her. I'm exicted to visit them in Philomath this summer. I love meeting peoples parents and learning about their relationships. we went to Jasmin Citronnelle for tea and scones on Wednesday, and then I spent a few hours with Lucy and her mum on Thursday evening.

Thursday I went with Jess to a Kabaret at Numéro 23. It was really silly, from what I could understand of it. The singing, dancing, and music was inpressive. Three bassons and an electric keyboard. Three singers, but the musicians all sang along at parts. It made me remember that I need to find somewhere to use my tap shoes. I miss dancing in almost every sense of the word.

This weekend I trekked out to Rochefort with Jess for her friend Andrea's birthday. It was a rather epicurean weekend, consisting of a lot of cooking, champagne, and conversation. The train to Rochefort is still out because of the storms we had a few weeks ago, and the wait for the next bus from Surgères, where the train took us, to Rochefort was a two hour wait, so we ended up hitching and got there in under half an hour. We went to the market, where all of the food was remarkably less expensive than in the gorcery stores. [Also, we bought chicken that still had some feathers on it...] I wish I knew more about French farm subsidizing. I have started looking into WWOOFing farms, and think it may be good to look into finding a farm soon, if that's what I am going to do this summer.

Tonight I washed my hair with dishsoap. It worked really well, my hair feels cleaner than it has in ages. Almost two years, and I still don't have a real washing strategy worked out. Lucy was lovely enough to spend a couple of hours helping me maintain my hair, but there's still loads of work to be done. I keep going back and forth between loving and hating it, but it's just so long and has been so long, and I'm just not quite ready for change.

I am feeling really unsatisfied with a couple of my classes. We had some exams last week. On the linguistic exam we had the question:

Expliquez pourquoi on dit:

1. Vous avez fait des progrès.

2. Vous avez fait de gros progrès.

Explain why one says:

1. You have made some progresses [des = plural, "progrès" itself has the same spelling in the singular and plural]

2. You have made a lot of progress[es] [in this context it's very ambiguous as to whether "progrès" is singular or plural, because of the "de gros"]

So, the difference between the two has something to do with this really inane rule "le règle de 't'as de beaux yeux", which seems to be more or less made up by my professor. It has to do with it not being absolutely necessary to use "des" [plural, meaning "of the" or "some", depending on the context and whether it's acting as a definite or indefinite article]. I asked a number of French students that I know here, and none of them knew about this rule, or could explain the difference. Or, the difference that they explained was SO nuanced that i wanted to kick someone. Further, apparently it would be quite bizarre for a French person to say "gros" in this context.

Beyond that, we have had 6 weeks of class, and the professor of my Sartre/Merleau-Ponty class has LITERALLY not said a single word about either of their philosophical systems. He has, however, wasted 5 classes [10 hours!] talking about Freudian theories of jealousy and causes of male homosexuality. And one class trying to explain how Lacan has turned Freuds "principles" into something of a Hegelian dialectic movement [which can still lead to homosexuality?], which I really disagree with. Unfortunately, this professor doesn't seem to want to be engaged by the students, especially not the foreign one who can hardly articulate herself.

On another note, I learned something very, very interesting about the French education system, which I don't have the energy to write about now, but am going to allude to now, so that tomorrow or the next day or at some time in the future I'll remember to write about it. I keep having these recurring nightmares about going home early and not being able to take exams over here, or about not being able to get home for one reason or another and missing a lot of Oregon summer. Jess suggested some responses for me to give my dream self, so hopefully next time I'll be able to get out of the loop.