Language Update

Overall: I still cannot speak French.  In fact, I am just now getting to the level I thought I was at when I arrived here two weeks ago.

Here's the bummer about not speaking French: Now that I've been here for over two weeks, people expect me to have improved drastically.  This means that they speak more French and it is less appropriate for me to stare blankly at them in return.  As a result, I have now agreed to even more things that I don't actually comprehend and I often know what is going on even less of the time.  Sometimes, I find out what exactly I said "Oui, oui!" to later on.  

Ex:  "French french french french french"    "Oui, oui!"      Then a couple of hours later someone is serving me snails because I said I liked them earlier when they asked....

This also happens a lot with the children- Later on in the day I hear them say to their mother "Allie says that I can have all the candy I want because people in America eat donuts every day!!!" (I thought I actually said, "Donuts are more popular than croissants in the USA, but you guys eat a lot of candy here.")

Also, I've had to recreate my life (and lie about some your lives) because I find out I said something wrong at some other point and I just have to go with it.  Similarly, my life in America must seem very extreme because I only know the words for "always" and "never." (I did just now google translate "sometimes" so perhaps I can avoid this problem in the future.)  For example: I have said that it snows every day in Boone, I never wear pants when I run (which according to the former exaggeration just makes me sound like a crazy person), and I always have two apples a day (a statement I said accidentally due to mispronunciation but said so adamantly that it seemed true).

I have to admit, I'm not trying as hard as I should be.  Some words are just really hard for me to say so I say something else instead (i.e. When looking for Jean's pacifier and I find it I would really like to say "I found it!" ...but the word for "find" is very hard for me...so instead I say "I have this now!"  Which I'm sure makes me look equally as dumb as just mispronouncing "found.")

I'm just going with the flow and I find out what we're doing when we do it.  Laetitia tells me the plan but um....I don't really speak French.  Here's a good metaphor for what life here is like for me...when you go to someone's house and knock on the door expecting one person but a totally different person is there.  Except, thats not really a metaphor because it happens to me pretty often (I could have sworn we were going to see Marie this morning...but then we were at June's house..)

Also, I'm having a hard time getting used to the slang.  I learned "chercher" means "to find"...so you can imagine my concern when Laetitia casually mentioned she had to go out and find Jean.  That's when I learned that "chercher" can also mean "to get" [Jean from daycare].

This picture is just to make you forget you spent 20 minutes reading this super long post.  Please forgive me? Look at the cute French baby with a cream puff!