Les Miserables

So I went with the various french classes to see Les Mis up in Cleveland. It was pretty awesome! I think in a lot of ways I liked it better than Phantom of the Opera. Phantom relies a lot on special effects while in my opinion Les Mis was a lot more symbolic looking and interpretive. My favorite character was Eponine. I also liked Javert though I didn't like how he randomly cracked and killed himself, maybe he was a little unstable to begin with. Anyway, when I got home, I downloaded a few songs for my ipod. Since then, I've been singing what I know of "Do You Hear the People Sing" Rather loudly. Mom was trying to talk to me earlier today and she's like "Do you know what you have to do for me?" I started in with. "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men" I thought it was funny but I don't think she got it. Actually, she's pretty smart so she probably did and was just choosing to ignore it. After the play, I asked Madame if she had Les Miserables in it's book form in French. She said she had the three volume abridged version. I let the subject drop.

Speaking of books, we started our 'novel' in French class. The quotes are because it's not really much of a novel it's actually a script. WHICH ABSOLUTELY DRIVES ME INSANE! GRRRR! Okay, I'm done. I'm not going to complain either because there's not much I can do about it and besides, it could be worse...we could be doing evil grammar!

The Coolest Job Ever!

Okay, so one more for the night. Have I ever told you what the coolest job ever would be? Check it out!

NCS Language Officer

So I Lied

Alright, My Language Exchange is not the site I thought it was. There is actually a site I like better, you get more responses and it's absolutely free! Your posting stays up for sixty days and your e-mail address isn't given out randomly.

Pen Friends

I'll be posting this link along with the other two this evening. I'm still trying to work on the Russian Cases PDF but unfortunetely I've been rather swamped with a physics catapult project and tech rehersals for a play I'm helping with. Like I've said, I'll get to it ASAP. We start chapter ten in Russian tomorrow. Last chapter of the book! Yay! I've got to figure out my college schedule for next semester.

The Irony

I think it's interesting that everytime I think I'm losing my languge thing, or even everytime I get spazzy or discouraged when I'm learning a language Something happens that makes everything all right again. So remember that lovely little quiz that I'd thought I'd missed like three on? Well, we got it back yesterday. Before Madame passed it out, she said that anyone who got a hundred percent on it would get bonus points. When I got mine back I was confused at first, it just said "bon" on it. It took me a second to realize that I HAD GOTTEN THEM ALL RIGHT! I was very happy because I kind of like bonus points. There is also the satisfaction that I can indeed do french grammar and do it correctly. Not to say I do it correctly all the time... so there you have it, my good news for the day!

We watched a movie in Spanish class today. We've been learning about Spain. You know something interesting? I've never been into Spanish much. Even the when we study the different countries and I LIKE culture. But when we've been talking about Spain, it's been really interesting for some reason. I'm not sure exactly why, but I've got this kind of thing for Spain and I've put it on my list of places to visit. Nifty eh?

I've got a few new links for you all. One is a Russian site (since I don't have that many links to Russian sites) and the other is pretty cool. Have you ever wanted to correspond with someone from another country but had no idea where to start? My Language Exchange can help. You can put your name up in a number of different languages and people can e-mail you and you can begin an e-mail exchange. Have fun with both of these. I'll be putting them up in the left hand column ASAP.

Master Russian
My Language Exchange

Also, I'm working on a sort of download thingy for Russian. it's going to hopefully have stuff about the six Russian cases.

Stupid Grammer...

So I'm definitely thinking I'm better at learning a language by immersion rather than in a classroom because honestly, I HATE GRAMMER! in French class we're all of a sudden learning all kinds of random tenses plus que parfait, conditionel passé, and one other one that has to do with the futur. Anyways, we had a quiz today where we had to match the French with the english translation and that's all good with me except that I have to actually sit and think about it which in a language, is not like me at all. So Madame gave us about five minutes to do this matching quiz. I had like three left and she's like "Okay you need to pass you papers in in ten seconds." Frantically I just mark some random stuff and I'm pretty positive that I got all three wrong.

As if French isn't bad enough, I've got a beef with Russian too. This just isn't a good time In my language learning life. Anyway, we're learning this lovely thing in Russian call Perfective and Imperfective. It's absolutely crazy! It's like if the sentence is imperfective, you use your verb and everything is happy, but if it's perfective, you have to use an entirely different verb! My problem is of course telling which sentences are perfective and which are imperfective. I can't even do it when we use english sentences as examples! Svetlana said that this is the point in our Russian careers where we can start hating her/the language/whatever.

We're going to have a Russian week. You can go to different workshop thingys. Which sounds interesting but I'm not sure how many I can go to because I'm helping with a play at community theater and next week is tech week. Anyway, there's going to be some interesting things and an essay contest which should be interesting and I'll probably do. I want to do it and go to some of Russian week because when you go, you get points towards your final exam. Anyways, that's about all I've got from here, oh wait. Svetlana said that an air force person was going to come to our Russian class and talk I think tomorrow. OOh the irony!