Alors...no pictures today

WARNING: The longer I am in France the more likely I am to slip into franglais. I was translating something today and I was thinking and seeing "is" but my hand was writing "est". After I started taking french classes it took me 3 years ti remember that dance en anglais is spelled with a "c" and not an "s" comme la francais.

Today was fairly boring. I was in the office this morning and then I met my supervisor (she was out yesterday) and then I went with her to a meeting (un reunion). I like french but I am getting very frustrated because my uncle just throws me into situations where I have no idea what is going on and where most people don't speak english. I know that he is trying to get me to hear more words and make an effort to talk but it is becoming very difficult. I was trying to talk to the IT guy this afternoon as he was fixing my work computer and giving me the passwords and server addresses for my work email, and although I understood him fairly well, I was having a very hard time communicating my thoughts.

Someone at the meeting put it the best way...they have "tourist english." Enough english to get them around but not enough that they can carry on a conversation. That is what I fell like. I can ask for directions, order food, ask someone to take my picture, etc. but I can't actually talk to people...yet. My uncle told me that his goal at the end of these three months is to have people tell me that I have a very good American accent...meaning, he wants me to be able to speak well enough that no one will be able to tell that it is not my first language. I dunno...that's a pretty tough goal.

It's almost 10pm my time and I should go to sleep because I was up very early this morning trying to connect to the Internet so that I could im parents. Stupid connection didn't want to work.

I'm going to try again in the (my) morning. Hopefully I'll be able to be online at about 8:30 or 9pm.

A tout allure!