Instead, he posts a link to pictures! I didn't actually take pictures of people, or really anything from the party except the giant dish. You'll see. Most of this is Le Musée d'Orsay, for the little time I was there (it closes much earlier than the Louvre...I did not know this before hand). However it is free for those under 18, so I didn't really lose anything. No! I'm not writing a blog! Pictures and that's it!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=78168&id=791249048&l=fedf6014b8
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
I hide in the shadows
Alternate title: "Il fait trop chaud d'etre vivant"
Yes, apparently it was over 30 yesterday, which is flirting with the triple digits in Fahrenheit. There was a party with family friends (pictures later), in which Phillippe made a giant [insert name of dish that I've forgotten here], and it was delicious. It was langoustine, shrimp, muscles, calamari, chicken, and various vegetables all over brown rice. Or, at least the rice was brown after the oily frying process. I ate too much of it. There was also fruit salad, which was good, but I'm proud to say my grandma makes it better (sorry, France). There was much video gaming chez les enfants, because there was five of us and plusiers de 4-player games for the wii. It's funny, because wii is said the same as oui. Franchement, Smash Bros Brawl is pretty nul with wiimotes; I have lost all my mad Kirby skillz.
Oh, Matty will like this: so, I'm watching Buffy now. I'm not sure what to think about it, but it's grown on me. I usually watch all three episodes after school (French TV compresses it's scheduling, shows don't fit into half an hour time slots, they fit as they please. Shows can start at 5:10 and go to 5:35 or something like that. It's funny, because the commercial breaks ten to be saved until after the episode, or happens only once in the middle, and when there's no commercial after the "dramatic fade to black after cliffhanger" and it just goes back into the show immediately after, it's kid of silly.) I'm keeping this short though, easier on the eyes.
Yes, apparently it was over 30 yesterday, which is flirting with the triple digits in Fahrenheit. There was a party with family friends (pictures later), in which Phillippe made a giant [insert name of dish that I've forgotten here], and it was delicious. It was langoustine, shrimp, muscles, calamari, chicken, and various vegetables all over brown rice. Or, at least the rice was brown after the oily frying process. I ate too much of it. There was also fruit salad, which was good, but I'm proud to say my grandma makes it better (sorry, France). There was much video gaming chez les enfants, because there was five of us and plusiers de 4-player games for the wii. It's funny, because wii is said the same as oui. Franchement, Smash Bros Brawl is pretty nul with wiimotes; I have lost all my mad Kirby skillz.
Oh, Matty will like this: so, I'm watching Buffy now. I'm not sure what to think about it, but it's grown on me. I usually watch all three episodes after school (French TV compresses it's scheduling, shows don't fit into half an hour time slots, they fit as they please. Shows can start at 5:10 and go to 5:35 or something like that. It's funny, because the commercial breaks ten to be saved until after the episode, or happens only once in the middle, and when there's no commercial after the "dramatic fade to black after cliffhanger" and it just goes back into the show immediately after, it's kid of silly.) I'm keeping this short though, easier on the eyes.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Universally Speaking
That is a song name, however it has absolutely nothing to do with today's topic. I have this theory, you see, about the course of the world. I noticed some trends, and I believe over the course of quite a long time, this will come to be.
Many discussions travel the topic of the popularity of languages. It's said English is the number one most spoken language, followed by Spanish. However, French is supposed to be the number two in business and diplomacy. Essentially what this means is there is more people speaking Spanish, they're just not doing too much internationally with it. I was once told that Mandarin Chinese was the fasted growing language, which I thought was a funny way to measure things, because it was in comparison to itself, implying that if I were to create a new language and teach it to ten people by the end of the day, my language would've increased 1000%. However, what this means in terms of my theory is essentially nothing.
Maybe I thought of this before, though it was catalyzed during a conversation with someone in a German class, someone in a Japanese class, and someone else in a French class. We were talking about pizza. Fun fact: it's the same in English, French, German, (I think Spanish) and we can safely assume Italian. This all makes sense, European languages frolic hand in hand frequently. What gets me is Japanese. As we've seen, Japanese - from the little I understand of it and its rules - is the most to have adapted to this merger.
Oh, yes, I haven't explained my whole point. I believe that all languages are slowly merging into one, universal language. I would definitely get marked down for putting the thesis this far down.
Japanese, as we all know, has certain attributes different from European languages (by the way, I am placing English in this category too, because it started in Europe. Also I don't know about Russian, I don't think it follows the same rules though). For example, the calligraphy in place of our familiar alphabet. In fact, let's talk about this a moment. If Japanese was entirely self-contained and was not being inducted into this one world, one language program (not an actual program), then why would a chart such as this exist? Perhaps it's to write things like this: They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana (from Wikipedia). That word there is a Japanese word, written in a language that is not Japanese. Also, did you know URLs in Japan are in this same form? Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject, but it looks to me as if Japanese writing system has an entirely new form, which makes it more adaptable to the Western world. That is Japanese being inducted into this system.
We see it also as concepts move from one culture to another; without already having a word existing for it, the new culture will simply adopt the already existing word. For example: "internet," or pretty much anything Japanese (ninja, samurai, manga, pocky, I could go all day with this), "week-end" and "stop" are both common words in French. Let's take a closer look at just English and French, because I haven't spent a couple months in Japan, nor couple years in a class of the language, so I should leave it alone for now. They practically grew up together and both heavily influenced by Latin, therefore it's no surprise that about 30% of the English language is the same as the French translation. Much of the time, when I'm stuck on not knowing how to say a word, I try just saying it in a French accent and it works. Honestly, most English speaking people could probably handle their own at least ready French (it gets tricky with the accent). Take a look at my SVT notes if you want proof. Let's look at one line in particular: "une planète: c'est un corps céleste qui n'emit pas lumière."
Breaking it down we find planète=planet, corps=body (like core, corpse, or in the military), céleste=celestial, emit=emit (and that n' and pas looks pretty negative...), lumière=light (like illuminate, or the candle from Beauty and the Beast). What do we have? A definition of a planet as a celestial body that does not emit light (as opposed to a star, which does). Wasn't that fun?
I could keep going with all these examples, but I figure you get my point. This is essentially how I think it's going to go down: English will become the solvent to this language solution (science pun!), considering it stands as the lingua franca of much of the world already, not because I'm an arrogant American. Also, according to Wikipedia, it's already accumulated words from over 50 different languages. However, I do not believe "English" will become the "dominate" language, or the one and only. What I believe is that English will continue to spread, such as through schools built in third world countries, internet, video games that don't get translated, English-based companies that go international. Though as it grows, it feeds - words from all the languages it slowly replaces get drafted in, and the languages themselves aren't necessarily replaced, but changed to fit certain grammatical structures. As all languages grow as the world becomes more interconnected, they share words, they adapt to the voice of their speaker and the ears of their audience. And slowly, we're all speaking the same language.
Either that, or instant online translator (courtesy of the Google machine) becomes like the babel fish from The Guide and renders every learning a second language completely useless. You know, whatever happens first.
Many discussions travel the topic of the popularity of languages. It's said English is the number one most spoken language, followed by Spanish. However, French is supposed to be the number two in business and diplomacy. Essentially what this means is there is more people speaking Spanish, they're just not doing too much internationally with it. I was once told that Mandarin Chinese was the fasted growing language, which I thought was a funny way to measure things, because it was in comparison to itself, implying that if I were to create a new language and teach it to ten people by the end of the day, my language would've increased 1000%. However, what this means in terms of my theory is essentially nothing.
Maybe I thought of this before, though it was catalyzed during a conversation with someone in a German class, someone in a Japanese class, and someone else in a French class. We were talking about pizza. Fun fact: it's the same in English, French, German, (I think Spanish) and we can safely assume Italian. This all makes sense, European languages frolic hand in hand frequently. What gets me is Japanese. As we've seen, Japanese - from the little I understand of it and its rules - is the most to have adapted to this merger.
Oh, yes, I haven't explained my whole point. I believe that all languages are slowly merging into one, universal language. I would definitely get marked down for putting the thesis this far down.
Japanese, as we all know, has certain attributes different from European languages (by the way, I am placing English in this category too, because it started in Europe. Also I don't know about Russian, I don't think it follows the same rules though). For example, the calligraphy in place of our familiar alphabet. In fact, let's talk about this a moment. If Japanese was entirely self-contained and was not being inducted into this one world, one language program (not an actual program), then why would a chart such as this exist? Perhaps it's to write things like this: They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as man'yōgana (from Wikipedia). That word there is a Japanese word, written in a language that is not Japanese. Also, did you know URLs in Japan are in this same form? Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject, but it looks to me as if Japanese writing system has an entirely new form, which makes it more adaptable to the Western world. That is Japanese being inducted into this system.
We see it also as concepts move from one culture to another; without already having a word existing for it, the new culture will simply adopt the already existing word. For example: "internet," or pretty much anything Japanese (ninja, samurai, manga, pocky, I could go all day with this), "week-end" and "stop" are both common words in French. Let's take a closer look at just English and French, because I haven't spent a couple months in Japan, nor couple years in a class of the language, so I should leave it alone for now. They practically grew up together and both heavily influenced by Latin, therefore it's no surprise that about 30% of the English language is the same as the French translation. Much of the time, when I'm stuck on not knowing how to say a word, I try just saying it in a French accent and it works. Honestly, most English speaking people could probably handle their own at least ready French (it gets tricky with the accent). Take a look at my SVT notes if you want proof. Let's look at one line in particular: "une planète: c'est un corps céleste qui n'emit pas lumière."
Breaking it down we find planète=planet, corps=body (like core, corpse, or in the military), céleste=celestial, emit=emit (and that n' and pas looks pretty negative...), lumière=light (like illuminate, or the candle from Beauty and the Beast). What do we have? A definition of a planet as a celestial body that does not emit light (as opposed to a star, which does). Wasn't that fun?
I could keep going with all these examples, but I figure you get my point. This is essentially how I think it's going to go down: English will become the solvent to this language solution (science pun!), considering it stands as the lingua franca of much of the world already, not because I'm an arrogant American. Also, according to Wikipedia, it's already accumulated words from over 50 different languages. However, I do not believe "English" will become the "dominate" language, or the one and only. What I believe is that English will continue to spread, such as through schools built in third world countries, internet, video games that don't get translated, English-based companies that go international. Though as it grows, it feeds - words from all the languages it slowly replaces get drafted in, and the languages themselves aren't necessarily replaced, but changed to fit certain grammatical structures. As all languages grow as the world becomes more interconnected, they share words, they adapt to the voice of their speaker and the ears of their audience. And slowly, we're all speaking the same language.
Either that, or instant online translator (courtesy of the Google machine) becomes like the babel fish from The Guide and renders every learning a second language completely useless. You know, whatever happens first.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Louvre, Chapitre 2
These are the promised continuations of last time's post. This makes since, for it has a 2 in the title.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76247&id=791249048&l=91f59994f6
And I have a movie to go with this one too. Unfortunately, it has not my soothing voice to carry you along it's magical course, but it still offers a fun though blurry adventures of the Parisian train system. Not for those who get motion sick easily.
This video and the other one can be found in bigger versions at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/video/?id=791249048
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76247&id=791249048&l=91f59994f6
And I have a movie to go with this one too. Unfortunately, it has not my soothing voice to carry you along it's magical course, but it still offers a fun though blurry adventures of the Parisian train system. Not for those who get motion sick easily.
This video and the other one can be found in bigger versions at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/video/?id=791249048
Monday, May 18, 2009
Louvre, Chapitre 1
This is part one of the photo tour of the Louvre, it's mainly the Egyptian stuff.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76009&id=791249048&l=2318c0b612
This is a (poorly) narrated video (the narration was added after) to go with the pictures.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76009&id=791249048&l=2318c0b612
This is a (poorly) narrated video (the narration was added after) to go with the pictures.
Friday, May 15, 2009
La Tour Eiffel
Read about - and see! - the continuing adventures in the Eiffel Tower!
The pictures can be found at this easy-to-remember link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75322&id=791249048&l=4db40d1e51
(sarcasm is not as common here...I begin to miss it...)
The pictures can be found at this easy-to-remember link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75322&id=791249048&l=4db40d1e51
(sarcasm is not as common here...I begin to miss it...)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Testing
I'm just going to test something out here. I haven't been writing for a while, and that last post was to be much shorter, but since I haven't written in a while, it more or less exploded forth. I'm going to try and get in the habit of posting regularly, like I said I was going to before I even left.
Thomas and I go to the park about eight o'clock everyday (since Monday) to take Utah (the dog, and in French it's said oo-tah) for a walk. It's not a park so much as a path with obstacles, like bars to climb, and things for sit-ups, and a balance beam, things like that. We usually race through it, almost tying every time, and then we "faire du combat" on the balance beam, and we usually tie at that too. It's fun.
Saturday night we went up the Eiffel Tower. On foot. Yes, we went up (and down) the entire way by stairs. I got a lot of pictures that I'll try to post today. It was really amazing, Though Paris without the Eiffel Tower (because you can't see it from the tower!) is oddly odd. There was an uncomfortable amount of couples making out. There was one American couple (with some friends) who were on the honeymoon and doing a little video about it.
Yesterday I went to the Louvre. It blew my mind. My mind was blown. And then I went into the second courtyard, and experienced a similar feeling. This is all before actually going in. I must've been inside for about three hours, which wasn't nearly enough, but I had to be home by about seven. It's free for people under 25, courtesy of Nicolas Sarkozy, and pictures are allowed (except for the exhibit on the Chinese drawings, or the drawings based on a Chinese poem). I've never been a big fan of the Mona Lisa, it never held much appeal for me, so I wasn't too disappointed to find that it's behind a protection of glass, and you can't get within ten feet of it, and there was a constant group of people around it. Anyways, I'll do details of the adventure in the captions of the pictures...which I will also try to post today.
I don't think I really have anything else to report. Hopefully I kept this short enough. Oh, yes, I learned something in my English class: 'Fun' is only an adjective in informal speech, it's really a noun, that's why you say "more fun" instead of "funner" even though, following the rules of adjectives, it should be the second way.
Well, hopefully I'll post again before too long. Don't be afraid to comment.
~Taylor En France.
Thomas and I go to the park about eight o'clock everyday (since Monday) to take Utah (the dog, and in French it's said oo-tah) for a walk. It's not a park so much as a path with obstacles, like bars to climb, and things for sit-ups, and a balance beam, things like that. We usually race through it, almost tying every time, and then we "faire du combat" on the balance beam, and we usually tie at that too. It's fun.
Saturday night we went up the Eiffel Tower. On foot. Yes, we went up (and down) the entire way by stairs. I got a lot of pictures that I'll try to post today. It was really amazing, Though Paris without the Eiffel Tower (because you can't see it from the tower!) is oddly odd. There was an uncomfortable amount of couples making out. There was one American couple (with some friends) who were on the honeymoon and doing a little video about it.
Yesterday I went to the Louvre. It blew my mind. My mind was blown. And then I went into the second courtyard, and experienced a similar feeling. This is all before actually going in. I must've been inside for about three hours, which wasn't nearly enough, but I had to be home by about seven. It's free for people under 25, courtesy of Nicolas Sarkozy, and pictures are allowed (except for the exhibit on the Chinese drawings, or the drawings based on a Chinese poem). I've never been a big fan of the Mona Lisa, it never held much appeal for me, so I wasn't too disappointed to find that it's behind a protection of glass, and you can't get within ten feet of it, and there was a constant group of people around it. Anyways, I'll do details of the adventure in the captions of the pictures...which I will also try to post today.
I don't think I really have anything else to report. Hopefully I kept this short enough. Oh, yes, I learned something in my English class: 'Fun' is only an adjective in informal speech, it's really a noun, that's why you say "more fun" instead of "funner" even though, following the rules of adjectives, it should be the second way.
Well, hopefully I'll post again before too long. Don't be afraid to comment.
~Taylor En France.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I've been afraid of you, Blog
I had a feeling that when the time came to sit down and write this inevitable blog, it would need to be a masterpiece, epic a length and glorious in the lavish descriptions of my daily adventures. I decided, in lieu of (lieu is French for place. And now you know!) delaying further this post, thus mounting ever-continuing metric tons of pressure on the necessary quality it most contain, I went for the simple escape.
I will tell you a few brief things. That will relieve pressure, and I will be less intimidated by the Most Recent Post's date slipping into the past.
I went on vacation, from April 12th to the 26th. First we went to Vatan (you may remember this unfortunately named city from a previous blog, for within this city lies the home of an Uncle and his family unit). We went to this very uncle's house again, where we stayed for two nights. I read comics, played cards, ate, pas grands choses. We left on Tuesday for Ile d'Oleron. It was a 4 to 5 hour drive. Quentin, Thomas et moi slept in a room smaller than my room is now. There was one bed and two air mattresses, we switched each night. Nothing really happened those first few days, Tuesday to Thursday, and if anything did happen it was drowned beneath the sea of anticipation that was crashing its waves within me. Thursday, we drove an hour to La Rochelle, where I got on a train which I rode for two hours. Medwin died during the third song, so the word 'hours' could effectively be replaced by 'millennia.' (Note: this is getting really annoying thinking of the words in French first and not knowing how to say what I want in English. You come second, French, know your place). I descended onto the platform, retrieving my cellphone from my pocket. It had been off to conserve battery for I had forgotten my charger in Oleron, so I turned it on and a bouquet of messages flourished on the screen - mounting degrees of worry, questions as to my status - and as I began my response, it suddenly and very pleasantly, became absolutely pointless. Because that's when Mariah hugged me.
Saturday was Mariah's birthday, so I got to stay til Sunday. (For another fun word swap activity, replace 'got' with 'wanted' and 'Sunday' with 'forever'). This weekend was a solid chunk of pure happiness. My words are entirely inadequate in expressing it.
The rest of the vacation was stressful as my personal space was eroded into nonexistence and my physical health suffered more in a matter of days than the last few years, I believe. This is the part where you assume I'm exaggerating so you don't worry (..mom). Not only was I was sick with a cough and a cold, I fell of the bike and had the pedal cut into my leg (I have pictures for all this too, don't worry), I bodysurfed too far onto the beach and sanded a patch of skin from my hip and tops of my feet, and the cherry on top: while handwashing a glass (no dishwasher there), it broke inexplicably and cut my hand in four places. The worst nick cut just over two sides of triangle skin flap from the side of my hand below my pinky. I suppose the quantity of blood emitted thenceforth, in addition with the plentiful existence of important anatomical things contained in the hand and the possibility of a little glass squatter still chilling in my wound, Magdeleine and Phillippe wrapped my hand craftily in several layers of paper towel and drove me to the local island medical center place. Which was closed. On a Saturday mid-afternoon. So we drove about a half hour to the nearest pharmacie, which, now this is weird, I was supplied medical attention equivalent to that of a nurse. When we got to the counter, the lady cashier was like, "Oh, let's take a look at that," and lead us into the back part of the pharmacie where she cleaned, examined, and bandaged the wound. Fortunately, it did not require stitches nor did it contain morsels of glass. We got home Sunday, technically Monday, at 00h30. Five and a half hours later, I woke up for school.
There was no school last Friday (the first of May is an important and flower-giving holiday). We went to Magdeleine's parents house where fun and delicious happened (fun - playing tag on a giant hill covered with giant rocks; delicious - I love macaroons) then we left around Midnight between Saturday and Sunday (you see a trend here?). Nothing much happened on Sunday. There is no school this Friday, I think it's the French Labor Day. I'm not sure if there's anything planned. Next week is normal, but the week after there's no school Thursday or Friday. This makes me happy. I believe we will be roasting a pig.
I saw Wolverine. I kind of need to talk about it with someone, who if you've seen it comment or email me.
Oh right, I have to tell about all the weird things I ate. I can't really remember anymore. I already talked about the escargot, right? We had raw oysters with almost every lunch and dinner in Oleron, that got old. I ate squid, it was good until I accidentally crunched into the beak. Lots of delicious shrimp. Oh, I went fishing for shrimp, which is kind of fun. You stand out in the rocks in the water with some nets laid in some holes, and when a shrimpy or two wanders in, you snatch up the net really fast. Oh no, now I have to talk about words.
pêcher - to fish
pécher - to sin
pêche - peach
dépêcher - to hurry (to dispatch, literally, but it's almost always used for 'to hurry')
There you go, I think there's another, but I can't remember. But seriously, francophones, is peche just a really cool sounding word that gets to go into a bunch of otherwise entirely unrelated words?
Another French language thing that makes Taylor upset: encore. Encore is french for 'again,' 'still,' and 'yet.' And according to Google translator, it also means 'anew,' 'even,' 'furthermore,' and 'over.' It must be some weird form of 'over,' but I mean...That's a total of seven words. Seven. And they're not even the same word! Also 'top' and 'bottom' and unlikable: 'dessus' and 'dessous,' respectively, and said almost exactly the same. Okay I'm done ranting about that for now.
Oh, yeah, food. I ate rabbit tonight. I ate it's liver. (No fava beans, no chianti)
Other stuff too, I just don't remember. I will eventually, and I will right about it later, which will hopefully not be after another month gap. I hope it was only a month. Anyways, I'm alive. How are you doing? No diseased pigs kill you yet? (Yeah, why did no one tell me about this Mexican/US plague that's already killed like 20 people?)
It's good to be back,
Taylor en France
I will tell you a few brief things. That will relieve pressure, and I will be less intimidated by the Most Recent Post's date slipping into the past.
I went on vacation, from April 12th to the 26th. First we went to Vatan (you may remember this unfortunately named city from a previous blog, for within this city lies the home of an Uncle and his family unit). We went to this very uncle's house again, where we stayed for two nights. I read comics, played cards, ate, pas grands choses. We left on Tuesday for Ile d'Oleron. It was a 4 to 5 hour drive. Quentin, Thomas et moi slept in a room smaller than my room is now. There was one bed and two air mattresses, we switched each night. Nothing really happened those first few days, Tuesday to Thursday, and if anything did happen it was drowned beneath the sea of anticipation that was crashing its waves within me. Thursday, we drove an hour to La Rochelle, where I got on a train which I rode for two hours. Medwin died during the third song, so the word 'hours' could effectively be replaced by 'millennia.' (Note: this is getting really annoying thinking of the words in French first and not knowing how to say what I want in English. You come second, French, know your place). I descended onto the platform, retrieving my cellphone from my pocket. It had been off to conserve battery for I had forgotten my charger in Oleron, so I turned it on and a bouquet of messages flourished on the screen - mounting degrees of worry, questions as to my status - and as I began my response, it suddenly and very pleasantly, became absolutely pointless. Because that's when Mariah hugged me.
Saturday was Mariah's birthday, so I got to stay til Sunday. (For another fun word swap activity, replace 'got' with 'wanted' and 'Sunday' with 'forever'). This weekend was a solid chunk of pure happiness. My words are entirely inadequate in expressing it.
The rest of the vacation was stressful as my personal space was eroded into nonexistence and my physical health suffered more in a matter of days than the last few years, I believe. This is the part where you assume I'm exaggerating so you don't worry (..mom). Not only was I was sick with a cough and a cold, I fell of the bike and had the pedal cut into my leg (I have pictures for all this too, don't worry), I bodysurfed too far onto the beach and sanded a patch of skin from my hip and tops of my feet, and the cherry on top: while handwashing a glass (no dishwasher there), it broke inexplicably and cut my hand in four places. The worst nick cut just over two sides of triangle skin flap from the side of my hand below my pinky. I suppose the quantity of blood emitted thenceforth, in addition with the plentiful existence of important anatomical things contained in the hand and the possibility of a little glass squatter still chilling in my wound, Magdeleine and Phillippe wrapped my hand craftily in several layers of paper towel and drove me to the local island medical center place. Which was closed. On a Saturday mid-afternoon. So we drove about a half hour to the nearest pharmacie, which, now this is weird, I was supplied medical attention equivalent to that of a nurse. When we got to the counter, the lady cashier was like, "Oh, let's take a look at that," and lead us into the back part of the pharmacie where she cleaned, examined, and bandaged the wound. Fortunately, it did not require stitches nor did it contain morsels of glass. We got home Sunday, technically Monday, at 00h30. Five and a half hours later, I woke up for school.
There was no school last Friday (the first of May is an important and flower-giving holiday). We went to Magdeleine's parents house where fun and delicious happened (fun - playing tag on a giant hill covered with giant rocks; delicious - I love macaroons) then we left around Midnight between Saturday and Sunday (you see a trend here?). Nothing much happened on Sunday. There is no school this Friday, I think it's the French Labor Day. I'm not sure if there's anything planned. Next week is normal, but the week after there's no school Thursday or Friday. This makes me happy. I believe we will be roasting a pig.
I saw Wolverine. I kind of need to talk about it with someone, who if you've seen it comment or email me.
Oh right, I have to tell about all the weird things I ate. I can't really remember anymore. I already talked about the escargot, right? We had raw oysters with almost every lunch and dinner in Oleron, that got old. I ate squid, it was good until I accidentally crunched into the beak. Lots of delicious shrimp. Oh, I went fishing for shrimp, which is kind of fun. You stand out in the rocks in the water with some nets laid in some holes, and when a shrimpy or two wanders in, you snatch up the net really fast. Oh no, now I have to talk about words.
pêcher - to fish
pécher - to sin
pêche - peach
dépêcher - to hurry (to dispatch, literally, but it's almost always used for 'to hurry')
There you go, I think there's another, but I can't remember. But seriously, francophones, is peche just a really cool sounding word that gets to go into a bunch of otherwise entirely unrelated words?
Another French language thing that makes Taylor upset: encore. Encore is french for 'again,' 'still,' and 'yet.' And according to Google translator, it also means 'anew,' 'even,' 'furthermore,' and 'over.' It must be some weird form of 'over,' but I mean...That's a total of seven words. Seven. And they're not even the same word! Also 'top' and 'bottom' and unlikable: 'dessus' and 'dessous,' respectively, and said almost exactly the same. Okay I'm done ranting about that for now.
Oh, yeah, food. I ate rabbit tonight. I ate it's liver. (No fava beans, no chianti)
Other stuff too, I just don't remember. I will eventually, and I will right about it later, which will hopefully not be after another month gap. I hope it was only a month. Anyways, I'm alive. How are you doing? No diseased pigs kill you yet? (Yeah, why did no one tell me about this Mexican/US plague that's already killed like 20 people?)
It's good to be back,
Taylor en France
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