Literature

Today I got to discuss the evolution of courtly love as a literary style in a classroom in the heart of the Aquitaine. That’s big. That’s like… huge. It was a lot of fun, and I’m sad that we have only one more class period of medieval literature before moving on to more recent French literature.

I did have another phonetics lab today, which means I got another tongue twister. This teacher has finally figured out that I have trouble pronouncing R’s, so she gave me a tongue twister from hell:

Un jour de canicule, sur un véhicule où je circule,

gesticule un funambule au bulbe miniscule, à la

mandibule en virgule et au capitule ridicule. Un

somnambule l’accule et l’annule, l’autre articule;

“crapule”, mais dissimule ses scruples, recule,

capitule.

I only have a couple more classes of this stuff, and I’m honestly starting to think I’m going to miss the tongue twisters. If the French classes (which will be about 5-6 hours a day) are as intensive as my literature class, I’m going to be crying like a baby by the third week.

Way back at this morning, someone buzzed my room again at a completely inappropriate time: 4:45am. Why is this crap going on? Anyway, I went back to sleep and woke up around 9 for school. After doing all my morning ritual stuff, I sat down for a few minutes to eat an orange. As I was sitting there, I was sweating profusely. It was freaking hot today, and really humid too. The night ended with a pretty spectacular lightning storm, and torrential rain. I don’t know when I’ll get used to the weather here.

Tonight several of us got some pizza to go and sat down and watched Gladiator. That’s not really something that’s very remarkable, but there was a moment early in the movie when Russell Crowe grabs a sword by the blade and uses it as a club against a guy. One of the girls remarked how impossible it was and how his hands would have been cut up. Being myself, I tried to explain how it was very possible and common to grip a sword by the blade without injuring your hands. This elicited the response: “Oh, like you’ve ever held a real sword.” Ouch. That hurt.

Anyway, onward to the weekend!