Day 12: Pau, France

We need to talk.  I know that I have been in boring old Pau for like 4 days straight, and I'm very sorry.  I swear I will do something cool soon.

That being said, today was a pretty good day.  I had phonetics class again this morning. It was basically more conversing with the computer.  It always seems a bit one sided.  We also get a poem/tongue twister to say each time we go.  This is my poem for tomorrow:

Yeah, I have a back lit keyboard.  It's no big deal.

 I really like the lady who teaches the phonetics lab.  She always makes me feel really good about being terrible at speaking French.  It is very sweet. After this class, I went and made copies of my passport for my residency paperwork.  I am getting much better at French, but simple things like that still pose a bit of a challenge.  I then worked on my French homework with Laura.  It was really hard.  It is still not completed.  it is really hard doing homework in a language you barely speak.  We should probably do a better job of accommodating non English speaking students into our education system... Anyway, after about an hour of struggle, it was time for our obligatory 6 hour lunch break.

So, here we are... The obligatory part of my blog where I talk about how awesome the food here is.  We went and ate lunch at the smaller of the two cafeterias on campus.  It is called La Vague.

1 € to the first one to figure out why it is called La Vague.

 The food here is always fantastic, even when it sucks, it is really good.  This isn't even "good" French food.  I am eating at a cafeteria.  I don't even know what I have been eating my whole life. Today the menu was paupiette de boeuf (this is basically a present, except the wrapping paper is beef, and the present is like, vegetables and stuff.  The string is still just string.), penne pasta, carrots, and my usual yogurt, fruit and Orangina.  I know it looks like the Orangina is on her tray, but don't worry, we switched. An exciting thing also happened at La Vague today.  I told the food man what I wanted, and he gave me my food without squinting at me or asking what I said, or giving me that look French people give when you ruin their language. 

I guess Laura really likes carrots...

 After lunch, we finished our homework.  Mostly.  We gave up towards the end.

I then went home and did nothing for a little bit, and then we had dinner.  Dinner was a tomato and basil salad, made by yours truly. (I chopped the tomatoes.) And pasta with either pesto or some kind of balsamic sauce.  You got to pick which one you put on your pasta.  There was also green salad and bread and wine and cheese.  I am always amazed that this family can get the kitchen spotless after dinner in about 5 min.  It is awesome.

After dinner, I practiced trumpet, which was nice, except I sound really, really, really bad.  It is sad for me.  However, I have a very cool playing opportunity.  I will be performing “Les Mousqetaires au Couvent” by Louis Varney with a local opera company.  I have no idea how good they are, but it should be a lot of fun.
We will perform at the start of November at the Théatre St Louis de Pau. 

I lose a little bit of vacation time, but it should be a lot of fun.

I'm going to start having prize offerings for the people who make it to the end of these blog posts.