Just when I thought I was getting decent
Not really a whole lot to update on:
The New Zealander (By the way, I think the French term for a New Zealander is way cooler: "néo-zéalandais") and I watched a movie called "City of God" with the lycee's movie club. It seemed interesting, but it's Portugese (takes place in Rio de Janeiro), and they watched it dubbed instead of subbed. I honestly hate watching live action movies that are dubbed, especially because dubbed tracks have so many timing issues (trying to slam the translated line into the space given by the actual character's line), and so everyone was talking really quickly, and I couldn't read lips to figure out what they were saying, and it's about gangs and drug-running among teens-20 year olds, so there's a ton of slang... basically I got about 40-50% of what was being said... if that. It was thoroughly depressing. Even given the option in English, I prefer to watch a movie in it's original language and read the subtitles. But maybe that's just me. Cartoons are different, since the timing of the mouths to the dialogue is a little different; it just doesn't bother me as much.
Simultaneously looking forward to, and dreading tomorrow, since it's my really long day... all things considered. I go from 8:30-4:30 with a 2 hour break, and then 7:30-10:30/11ish (but that's fun stuff). Still, just a really full day. But it's usually a lot of fun. Still haven't heard what I'm supposed to be doing in the classes, so I figure we're at the "winging it" stage. Granted, I speak the English language, so that shouldn't be too bad. Gearing up for teaching about Thanksgiving, once tomorrow and then the rest next week. I think I'm going to leave out my stance on what the Thanksgiving greeting should be: "Happy 'We took your food, stole your land, and killed you with guns and diseases' Day!" Yeah... that's not necessary.
Anyway, Big Three:
Best: Got my Carte 12-25, which gives me massive reductions on trains in France. And a slightly less awesome reduction on trains in the rest of the EU.
Worst: Not understanding so much of the movie's dialogue.
Funniest: Trying to get things printed out at the Inspection (district office). We had problems since I use Mac, and they use PC's. So we had three of us trying to do tech support, and I'm half certain I was making up terms in French, since I was using a combination of literal translations and English words with French pronunciations. They seemed to be able to understand me though, and that's what counts.
The New Zealander (By the way, I think the French term for a New Zealander is way cooler: "néo-zéalandais") and I watched a movie called "City of God" with the lycee's movie club. It seemed interesting, but it's Portugese (takes place in Rio de Janeiro), and they watched it dubbed instead of subbed. I honestly hate watching live action movies that are dubbed, especially because dubbed tracks have so many timing issues (trying to slam the translated line into the space given by the actual character's line), and so everyone was talking really quickly, and I couldn't read lips to figure out what they were saying, and it's about gangs and drug-running among teens-20 year olds, so there's a ton of slang... basically I got about 40-50% of what was being said... if that. It was thoroughly depressing. Even given the option in English, I prefer to watch a movie in it's original language and read the subtitles. But maybe that's just me. Cartoons are different, since the timing of the mouths to the dialogue is a little different; it just doesn't bother me as much.
Simultaneously looking forward to, and dreading tomorrow, since it's my really long day... all things considered. I go from 8:30-4:30 with a 2 hour break, and then 7:30-10:30/11ish (but that's fun stuff). Still, just a really full day. But it's usually a lot of fun. Still haven't heard what I'm supposed to be doing in the classes, so I figure we're at the "winging it" stage. Granted, I speak the English language, so that shouldn't be too bad. Gearing up for teaching about Thanksgiving, once tomorrow and then the rest next week. I think I'm going to leave out my stance on what the Thanksgiving greeting should be: "Happy 'We took your food, stole your land, and killed you with guns and diseases' Day!" Yeah... that's not necessary.
Anyway, Big Three:
Best: Got my Carte 12-25, which gives me massive reductions on trains in France. And a slightly less awesome reduction on trains in the rest of the EU.
Worst: Not understanding so much of the movie's dialogue.
Funniest: Trying to get things printed out at the Inspection (district office). We had problems since I use Mac, and they use PC's. So we had three of us trying to do tech support, and I'm half certain I was making up terms in French, since I was using a combination of literal translations and English words with French pronunciations. They seemed to be able to understand me though, and that's what counts.