This entire week I've been in a funk. I blame it on the fact that last week was vacation and that breaking back into the schedule of classes is just entirely too hard a task. Add to that a small bought of nostalgia and the mantra "I understand nothing, I don't know what I'm doing, why am I even here again" and you will have the headspace I've been in all week.
So that being said, I wasn't really looking forward to my Friday classes: phonetics and French history. In the former I never be able to say a single sentence without making some huge error in pronunciation and in the latter I am always shocked by just how much my knowledge of history has managed to entropy since high school.
But this week when my phonetics professor asked if anyone would like to redo an exercise from last week to get more pointers, I was shocked to feel my hand rise. So, too, was the professor from her facial expression. I chose a read a simple passage from an old French poem:
It's a beautiful excerpt about the bitterness and dangers of both the sea and love, but apparently when I said it "amour" became "mort" because the inflection upon my "ou" came out more of an "o" than anything else. The teacher tried to help me correct this even though my mouth seemed to be incapable of forming the sound. I assured her that the poem worked better being about the sea and death. So not a triumph, but a learning experience.
In history this week the topic was "les années folles" entre deux guerres and featured a very long tangent about the origins of French feminism and first-wave feminism. I just sat back enthralled as the professor talked about all the things women began doing in France during WWI and in the years between the two world wars.
So I left the université Friday afternoon not completely in a different headspace, but Nantes did seem a little better, a little brighter.
So that being said, I wasn't really looking forward to my Friday classes: phonetics and French history. In the former I never be able to say a single sentence without making some huge error in pronunciation and in the latter I am always shocked by just how much my knowledge of history has managed to entropy since high school.
But this week when my phonetics professor asked if anyone would like to redo an exercise from last week to get more pointers, I was shocked to feel my hand rise. So, too, was the professor from her facial expression. I chose a read a simple passage from an old French poem:
Et la mer et l'amour ont l'amer pour partage,
Et la mer est amère et l'amour est amer,
L'on s'abîme en l'amour aussi bien qu'en la mer,
Car la mer et l'amour ne sont point sans orage.
Et la mer est amère et l'amour est amer,
L'on s'abîme en l'amour aussi bien qu'en la mer,
Car la mer et l'amour ne sont point sans orage.
It's a beautiful excerpt about the bitterness and dangers of both the sea and love, but apparently when I said it "amour" became "mort" because the inflection upon my "ou" came out more of an "o" than anything else. The teacher tried to help me correct this even though my mouth seemed to be incapable of forming the sound. I assured her that the poem worked better being about the sea and death. So not a triumph, but a learning experience.
In history this week the topic was "les années folles" entre deux guerres and featured a very long tangent about the origins of French feminism and first-wave feminism. I just sat back enthralled as the professor talked about all the things women began doing in France during WWI and in the years between the two world wars.
So I left the université Friday afternoon not completely in a different headspace, but Nantes did seem a little better, a little brighter.
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