I woke up in a room that I am still growing accustomed to. The time is 8am, a large improvement compared to the last two days when I woke up at noon.
I ate breakfast, a cracker infused with soymilk and dried figs. Since coming here, I have never eaten figs before although I've heard of them. It's very sweet. Audrey, a girl in my host family around my age, also sat down next to me for breakfast. She ate cereal with milk. The silence was a bit unnerving, so I asked in very broken french, "En general, qu'est-ce que tu as fait sur le weekend?" (Generally, what do you do on weekends?), to which she answered something along the lines of "J'ai fini mes devoirs et je suis allee au gymnase." (I finish my homework and I go to the gym.)
Afterwards, I wandered around the house and took some pictures of the family's cute pet turtle. Her name is Yoco. She ate the little plants we fed her. She enjoys getting her chin rubbed, the darling turtle.
Around this time, my allergies were getting worse. I don't know what I'm allergic to here, (it could be anything, since the list of what I'm allergic to is quite long.) but it's embarrassing constantly using so many tissues!
Later, Audrey and I went cycling around the town. She led me on a trail to a river; it was so pretty. However, being a complete loser and not changing into proper shoes, I scratched my left foot on some plants that I think is poison ivy. It felt like it got stung by many tiny needles. I went back and washed my foot.
Then it was lunch. My host family eat bread-- the baguette-- with their meals for lunch and dinner. They eat lightly first (a salad and maybe some other things) before moving on to the main course (pasta or rice, for example). For dessert, they eat either cheese, yogurt, fruits, or pastries. My host parents drink a small amount of red wine with their meals too.
My french family speaks to me completely in french. The people in the midi-pyrenees area speak very fast, and I can only catch a few words here and there when they're conversing on the lunch or dinner table. I remember when I first arrived that the dad told me that in his house, you speak french! I marked beginner for language proficiency, and I truly am a beginner. My biggest advice to you is to not stay in a foreign country until you are at least proficient in the language. You'll get the most out of it that way.
I had a headache now, and we were meant to go to a cave to see prehistoric paintings later. I searched my suitcase for some allergy medicine. I checked the back and it said not suitable to make someone asleep but it also said that it might induce drowsiness. I was kind of fixed on the "might" part, so shrugging, I popped the pill into my mouth. It wasn't until later when I was feeling pretty sleepy. Darn it.
The tour was completely in french, and I almost fell asleep when we finally reached the paintings. I was thinking something along the lines of, "it's so quiet here. What I wouldn't give to take a nap...", especially since the presentation was completely in french and I couldn't understand what she was saying other than a few key words like "cochon" and "cheval". I felt horrible later because these are the markings of people that lived before everything we knew in history happened. Farming, society, civilizations, innovations, wars...
<<Salon Noir>>
[photo not mine]I think the most significant thing I found in the cave was the writings from all different points in time. There were messages and marking dated 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s... There is nothing more fascinating than seeing a groups of messages from all different points in time and lives. At first I was confused because I always believed that the number of people that could read and write were a minority, but then I remembered that around the 1600s, Martin Luther translated the bible into German so it's more accessible. If western europeans could read around that time, can't they write too? Silly me for not realizing that sooner.
The most endearing thing was that despite writing in lovely cursive, the fact remains that those guys don't have perfect handwriting either. It's a little messy and shaky, much like the handwriting we see today.
Tomorrow I will go see what a french school is like. I'm pretty nervous...
Until then!
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