October 2, 2004

I just thought I'd e-mail everyone and let them know that I'm doing MUCH better now. My friends have started to ask me to do stuff with them and also, I love my new host family. The way things work in this club seem rather strange, though. I'm going to be here for one month, then another family for two months, another one for three and a FIFTH one for three months. It seems a little odd, but... ok.

My new family is very nice, and I've enjoyed having more conversations and people to talk to now. My host dad loves to tease me. For instance, he told me it would be my job to make sure that the grass stays neatly trimmed, and they have A HUGE YARD (unusual for France). Well, their house has just finished getting built and they don't HAVE grass yet. He likes to tease me other ways too. My new host parents had a bunch of friends over for dinner tonight, and I helped my host mom prepare dinner. It's nice to have stuff to keep busy. I'm also going to join a track team, so I stay in shape and to fill more time. My new family have a son and a daughter. The daughter is a little older than me, and is currently an exchange student in Canada right now, though with a different organization. Their son is 16, and in the Premièr (11th grade) with me. He's a VERY talented and very GORGEOUS swimmer (I promise, on my honor to remember all FOUR of the D's in Rotary =) =) =) =) I stayed up late with him last night doing stuff on the computer and showing him how to use his new graphing calculator.

School is going pretty well, though I still get exhausted listening and translating all the time. I feel badly because I forgot to use the formal tense of "you" when one of my teachers asked me a question in class the other day. She was very kind, and just corrected me; whereas I've had another teacher (and it was the FIRST day of school back on September 3rd) that was very furious with me and scolded me in front of the whole class. I don't mean to be rude, I just sometimes forget to use the formal tense of "you" since it doesn't exist in English and also, we didn't study it extensively in class at school. I'm quickly learning to correct such mistakes, because I don't EVER want to be disrespectful. I make silly mistakes do. On Wednesday, I was taking off my sweater in the morning, and told my friend "I am hot" well, in French you have to say "I HAVE heat" if you say, I AM hot, you're telling them that you think you're beautiful like a pop-star! Not at all what I meant to say. I've also made the mistake of telling a friend on-line, since I was tired and wanted to go to bed, "je vais coucher" not "je vais ME coucher" I learned that the ME is VERY important to distinguish what you're doing from doing something else. My English teacher, the man, (I have three, two women and a man) felt the need to tell me, in front of the entire class that my French is terrible and I have an incomprehensible accent. I beg your pardon!!! I know that my French is not wonderful, but most people understand what I'm saying, in spite of bad grammar and an American accent, which is improving. Also, I felt it was inexcusably rude to announce this to the entire class. I like all my other teachers though, well except my biology teacher, he kind of creeps me out.

For Thanksgiving next month, I promised many people pumpkin pie; my host family, the Rotary club here, my friends from Norway (she's NEVER eaten any form of pumpkin, domage, sad) and my advanced English class (not the aforementioned teacher) to bring pies there. They're all very excited and can't wait to taste them. It will be fun making them because they don't have canned pumpkin here, so I will be making it from fresh pumpkins, which I've done before and think it tastes even BETTER than canned pumpkin.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing better and am not so homesick anymore, but I'd love to hear from some of you, about Bush coming to Wooster and if anyone went to listen to Jane Goodall (I'm VERY jealous of you, by the way) I'd love to hear about it. Thanks for listening.

Bisous,
Aimée Katrina Shaw