L'Adaptation (The Adjustment)

Last few days have been a cooling off phase of sorts. I was meant to join the other international students for a trip to Marseille, but I was too exhausted and braindead from a day of concentrating on 2 and a half hour classes in French followed by a late night.

I slept pretty much half the day, then woke with up with a sudden urge to learn French grammar. It seems the good old days of high school when I had a real desire to learn have returned to me. I spent much of the rest of the weekend looking over French grammar and memorising massive conjugation tables - just like Latin and Sanskrit, all over again.

The trip to Marseille had apparently been uneventful; Rob had bought himself a secondhand guitar and was playing it Sunday - he is definitely a talented musician. The first thing he saw when he got off the bus in Marseille was a drunk woman swearing at a moving car, then spitting on it. Talk about a wonderful welcome to the city. There was a party that evening at the apartment of one of the Swedes living in Marseille; he met a mad homeless man there who spoke 10 languages. This seemed rather odd, if he spoke 10 languages one would imagine he would be able to seek stable employment and housing. It was probably the mad part of him that stopped him from doing so.

A bunch of us had lunch in Rob's room on Sunday, which he has renamed the 'Teahouse' and setup to look a bit like a caféteria. I met a cool guy there called Youssef from Madagascar who spoke fluent English and French and a lot of Spanish too. He wants to be a professional translator, and I think he'll do a good job. I was shocked to hear he was 27; he was the liveliest 27 year old I had ever met. I know 27 isn't that old, but I really thought he was like 20, 21. He was definitely much more lively than me, but for those of you who know me, that isn't exactly difficult.

I had a couple of classes today which sort of made sense, and then a horrifying class in European Law...I have to read court judgments in French!!! But its actually not that bad; they seem to write in language much more simplified than Australian judges...or less pretentious is probably the best phrase. The hard part is listening to the teacher as he is not easily comprehensible. It does not matter; I am doing plenty of side research on the structure of the EU and the nature of its legal system.

That's all for now. à bientôt!