Last night was a pitiful Mardi Gras but an excellent Tuesday, by any normal Tuesday standards.
Yestarday also marked the last day of our first official month in France. I think much has been accomplished in that one month. Especially considering that France's special goal is often to make sure that nothing gets accomplished.
(note: someone in the computer is snoring very, very loudly. This is by no means a joke. No one is waking him up, either. This is a great country.)
I am so amazed at the students here. In my two-hundred level translation class the students speak english often as well as I do or better, albeit very slowly. I think this a testiment to the Eurpean school system because there are 19 year olds who speak better English than our president. Mamadou is an excellent example. I have no idea how old he is, but his first language is something african, he speaks fluent french, a small amount of English and enough Spanish to be very funny when he's drinking. This is a person who's mother tongue isn't even remotely in the same language family as French.
Perhaps this has something to do with their note taking skills. I have never seen anything like this. Nearly everyone has a bag full of differently colored pens, as well as a ruler. It's somewhat like the way Carly Duhon takes notes: very meticulous, very neat. But they highlight, change colors, use erasable pens, don't doodle, underline with rulers and make corrections in red. IT IS COMPLETE INSANITY. I remember going through a phase where I took notes like that in seventh grade, but that was because Crayola came out with the bold marker shades, which included such colors as merrigold and midnight blue and because my teacher was remarkably boring.
No comments:
Post a Comment