J'irai en France

Well, Cindy and I finally bought our tickets to France a few days ago and are now booking flights and hotels for the Italian leg of our trip. There will be plenty more interesting posts coming in the near future.

I'm not too worried about the touristy thing. I was able to bumble around Montréal with barely a smattering of French and still manage to buy simple things, so long as I didn't try to ask about anything. I'm sure it will be the same in France and, of course, Cindy can always translate for me. But what does concern me a little is that we'll be staying with her parents, who speak barely a word of English.

My French class is going pretty well. (It's a second year undergrad class, so I can't take too much pride in the fact that I'm beating unmotivated frat boys. Seriously, the majority of undergrads here are about as motivated to learn as year nines; they're only there because their parents want them to be.) The other day my teacher paid me a big compliment by asking me "What are you doing in this class? Where did you learn to speak?" and telling me that my phonology is good. I was tempted to tell her about my secret weapon (a French girfriend) but instead I told her about the French table I go to every Tuesday evening. But now that we're learning more tenses - the future, conditional, future past and past conditional - it's starting to get a bit challenging for me too. But today I got to score a few participation points by correcting the teacher's spelling (there are a lot of homophones in French!). At least, I think it was in good humour when she said "Bravo, Nicolas!" and asked if I wanted to come up the front and teach!

First Amendment in Action

I saw something a little strange on the way home today. Now, on the edge of campus there is always a pair of Mormons holding a sign saying "Ask the missionaries any question" (I haven't yet had a chance to ask them the wind-speed velocity of an unladen swallow). Certainly these quiet Mormons are much more agreeable than the Mormons at UNSW who stand on Anzac parade accosting people as they try to cross the street.

Anyway, today there was another guy holding a sign that said "Warning: Your rights are about to be violated - seat belt check ahead." I was only a little surprised that there would be a seat belt check, that is something that a lot of Americans are quite lax about. More surprising was that someone would go to all that effort so that a few people can continue to not wear their seat belts.

But most astonishing is that there was a cop standing just 20m behind this guy, just watching him alert the traffic to the trap. Now, as I understand it, in Australia it's highly illegal to flash your headlights to alert other drivers about RBTs, ostructing the course of justice or some such thing. But this cop was just watching that guy with his sign. I can only assume that his right to free speech protected him. All the same, it's quite surprising that they didn't try to shuffle him off into a free speech zone.

Summer time, and the living is easy

I've just submitted my last paper for this semester and poured myself a strong drink. I'm now on holidays for three months. And by three months I actually mean three days, because I'm taking a summer class, which starts Tuesday.

Just like last summer, I'll be spending my time learning French. Although I did well enough last year to fulfil my department's language requirement but, while my reading skills are ok, my speaking skills are rather poor. So I'll be working on that, but not too hard.