Part 24: Many is for Quantity

March! Its official now. 1 month.

Today was a pretty nice day, I enjoyed it. I awoke this morning to the sound of a vaccum cleaner in the hallway just out my door, the Beyliers house cleaner was here early for some reason. Annoyed, I stayed in my room lying in bed thinking about what I wanted/needed to achieve today. When the vaccuming stopped I got up and had a shower then went down for breakfast. Inspired by the newly cleaned surroundings I went straight back upstairs after and cleaned my room properly. It is now pretty much spotless. Its amazing, I have practically nothing but I still manage to make a massive mess. Ridiculous. After, I also cleaned my bathroom giving everything a good spray and wipe.

In the right mood for it, I did two loads of washing, all my sheets and also all my clothes. It was good. While waiting for my sheets to finish, I went on the computer and chatted to people. When they finished, I hung them out then chucked on the next load. This time, rather than going on my computer I took Caroles advice she gave me this morning. She suggested I spend an hour or two completely English free. Do things that mean I dont have English anywhere, just French. I ended up watching the film 'Amelie' which I had seen before with English sub-titles quite a fair time ago. I watched it this time with no sub-titles and just loved it. Amelie is such a cool film it just makes you smile the whole way. I recommend it to everyone.

When Amelie finished I hung out the other load of washing. By this time it was nearly time to go pick up Tim from the bus stop. Carole asked me to go and pick him because she had to go and collect Fanny and her friends and take them to Handball. Happy to help and do something, I walked and met Tim arriving just on time. We then dawdled home as Tim told me of his day. He also found a stick that was nearly as big as him and took great pleasure in holding it up and showing that it was taller than me, pretending it was a bow and arrow and shooting things and then, in the end, trying to break it. It took a while to get home...

When we did it was about 4.50pm, I had piano with Carantin (Charlie) at 5.15 so I didnt really have time to do much, I sat on the piano here and fiddled around until it was time to go. Fanny was home too because she had a tummy ache and thus didnt go to handball. I put her onto grid 16 (a game - google it) and she played on that and kept yelling out her scores to me, while Tim was dancing to the music I was playing - that was funny, if I stopped he pretended to fall over and die or something, then when I played again, he would spring to life and dance again. Haha.

Eventually 5.15 came so I said toodleoo to the kids and walked over to Carantin and Ankes place. Piano went okay today. I got my message across again, but its really hard to do that. Its a good challenge though. I also think Anke did a great job in helping him practice throughout the week. He remembered everything and did pretty well with his scale. Today I was trying to explain about the rythm in music like the different between a crotchet and a quaver. It is especially hard because I dont really know the french terminology. Oh well. We worked out thanks to the magic of handclapping melodies and many demonstrations. I again explained to Anke what we had done this week. I think all will be well. I also learnt that Anke learnt the flute and recorder for 14 years all up and thus had the musical theory downpat- excellent. After a good but brief chat about that, I had to say my fairwells because today I also had my new English student...

I made my way from Ankes house and walked directly to Vincents place. Today was my first lesson with Vincents younger brother Antoin. Man, can I say, this was just fascinating for me. Having learnt French through textbooks and such, seeing English being learnt in the same way and seeing the textbooks and stuff was just bizarrely familiar but also somewhat confusing. Also, Antoin is very bad at English. Very bad. He confuses things like 'I' with 'she' and stuff like that. So, thats why I am there. A tutor. Its really good for me though as well because by teaching English through French, I am improving my French. So, its perfect. The lesson itself today was quite interesting, I just saw what he was learning and saw what he found the hardest. The weirdest part was trying to explain why we do things in English like why we use 'much' instead of 'many' some times and superlatives. Oh and conjugations of verbs, although much easier in english made me think. Its really quite fascinating. I can see this being pretty good.

Anyway, after the tutoring I went downstairs and chatted to the family for a while and organised a trip to Turin, Italy with Vincent that will likely to be happening in April. Not in March because exams are on. I also organised to go help out with Helenes (Vincents Mum) skiing thing. She runs a skiing course for kids (which Tim is involved in) every Wednesday. She invited me to come along just to try it. Its quite stupid really, I am going as a supervisor but I am not all that good of a skier AND I cant speak French all that well. Haha. Oh well, its free and its a day out :)

Back at the house of the Beyliers, I walked in on the other Smallvillers watching Smallville without me so I had to run upstairs so I didnt see what would happen! When it finished, I came down and chatted about my adventures making an uber conscious effort to really try to do it in French. I did that all day really now that I think about it. I wasnt lying in yesterdays blog! Then we had tea which was this yum pasta stuff then everyone went and did their own things, I watched my missed ep of Smallville. When that finished Carole asked if I wanted to watch the next one..then the next one... then the next one... Such a good show... :P

After, I came and typed this. its now 1am and I am wide awake sitting in a nice clean room listening to some awesome music.

I didnt organise my Switz trip today, I must do that in the next few days.

Catchyas :)