This Week

It's been an interesting week.  Most of it was good, some, not really.

In the not-really category, it turned out that despite essentially being given a blank check for the marking period in one subject where he's failing, the mento still did not turn in materials.  I was flabbergated.  We had words afterward, the next time we met.  From now on, I'm scaling my efforts down to what I can physically see.  This means that each and every time we meet, I'm going to ask him to dump out his bookbag, and we are going to sort stray materials. Every time.  I don't think it will change him, but it's what I can do, so I'm going to do it.

In the good but hard to believe category, I mentioned to a French conversation partner that I was musing about coming to France for a month, just to immerse myself in the language.  She told me, a week later, that she'd talked to her grandfather, who happens to have a furnished apartment next to his house, and he'd said that I could stay there, free, for a month if I wanted.

I've therefore become newly interested in upgrading my French skills, to the point where I've picked up two new partners -- one, a French woman living in Spain, and the other, a Canadian woman living in Quebec.  I was a little afraid that there would be a problem with the Canadian accent -- I told this to a French partner, who sniffed and said Canadian French is nothing like REAL French  -- but as it happens, the Canadian woman doesn't have Skype, so we are communicating via email.  She's a pretty interesting person. I also picked up as a partner a woman in Morocco (though I don't know how often we'll talk), and I apparently lost a person in southern France, who hasn't responded to a couple of notes over the last two weeks. Ah, well.  It's still good.

I also started listening to a French language film -- I understand about a quarter of it, unless they're muttering, which they do from time to time. And yes, it has subtitles.  I'm also working my way through a French-language novel, bumping up my vocabulary skills. I read one page today!  This is all good. 

Also today, the painters arrived to start work on the bedroom that we're redoing in expectation of visitors this summer -  our friends from France.  They're actually going to stay in the other bedroom, which has a larger bed, but now we'll have two rooms - one newly painted with a rather nice shade of pale green - just in case they bring a friend.

So, things are good.  Generally.