I continued my plan of waking up a little earlier today. I spent an additional five minutes looking at my phone in bed today and took extra time at breakfast. I also did not rush when heading out the door for the bus. When I rounded the corner to the main street, my bus was already at the stop, two minutes early! I full out sprinted to the bus and luckily the driver opened up the doors for me. So much for a relaxed day.
There is a guy who runs the eggs station at my BU dining hall and he gets very mad when you don’t say thank you after receiving your food. I think I met the French version of him today. After I stumbled onto the bus out of breath, I fumbled for my TAG card in my wallet and scanned it. I didn’t hear him, but the driver said bonjour three times in a nasty tone waiting for me to reply. I gave him my saltiest bonjour back and headed to the back of the bus. My day was off to a great start.
My first class of the day was differential equations which felt especially long today. After math I had my French class, and we finally learned the future tense in French. I no longer have to awkwardly say everything in present tense any more. Our professor was also trying to get us practice our pronunciation with tricky sentences. The sentence we had to say was “Je savoure un dessert dan le desert, avec mon cousin assis sur un coussin”. The trick is to make the “ss” sounds like an S and to make “s” sounds like a Z. This sentence was pretty difficult for most of us. I can’t even imagine people learning English having to say “Sally sells seashells by the seashore”. My classmates were also impressed that I already had a bunch of irregular conjugations memorized. I told them my trick was to practice them while doing planks at the gym. They said this was very extra. They were not wrong.
I also have learned that I’m one of the few people that lives with a host family that speaks zero English. Even my friends that speak French well, usually speak English with their host families. If I don’t speak French in my home, I just don’t say anything. The motivation to learn French is real for me.
I had a 45 minute break after French before my circuits lab. I used this time to get a sandwich for lunch and do my circuits pre-lab. For lunch today, I got a whole baguette that had an insane amount of brie on it. I love that something like this is considered a valid lunch in France.
Delicious and only 3 Euros
Circuits Lab was not too terrible today. I actually understood everything we did, which is unusual for these type of classes. We were using Kirchhoff’s rules and a type of circuit called a Wheatstone Bridge to test uncertainties of various resistance calculations. The lab took two and a half hours and wasn’t too frustrating.
Jonathon and I’s Lab setup
During lab, Jonathon and I remembered that we had to make a presentation for our culture class tomorrow. Our presentation had to be on the second chapter of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, one of the texts for our class. We agreed that I would grab my laptop from home, then head to his place to work on it.
On the way home, I stopped at drug store to buy a face wash since mine had run out. I didn’t see any American brands I knew, so just settled for the first one that looked okay and had visage, the French word for face, on it. Hopefully I did not accidentally purchase a foot cream or something.
On the way to Jonathon’s house, I took this pretty picture.
I got to his house and we started working. Dylan also lives with Jonathon. I figured I should mention this because Dylan is an avid reader of my blog.
The chapter we are presenting on is all about the French’s attachment to their land. The region they’re from is known as their pays, and is a strong part of their cultural identity. They’re is a mentality called terrien in France which means that everything is related back to the land. For example, cuisine is very linked to the various pays. Cheese is a great example as Roquefort cheese only comes from Roquefort and is seen as a pride thing. They also don’t see cooking as simply a transformation of food, but rather an extension of the land itself.
Where food comes from in France is also super important. This is something I’ve seen strongly during my time in France. For the French, there’s nothing distasteful in the thought that what they eat once lived and breathed. Every meat or cheese you buy has specific information about where and when it is from.
Here’s a nice quote from the text.
“Additionally, there are no French words to separate animals from meat. In English, we eat beef, not cows; we eat pork, not pigs. Boeuf in French is a generic word for cattle, whether it is standing in a field or in a plate. Cachon is a generic term for pigs, whether on a farm or in sausages. When the French order escargot, they are calling a snail a snail.”
This is all part of that terrien mentality.
I only stayed at Jonathon’s for about an hour because I had to return home for dinner. Unfortunately, one of the two buses I had to take home was running late. I was a few minutes late to dinner, but it ended up being fine. For dinner we had some thick liquidy sauce that tasted like lentils and chicken cutlets as an appetizer. The main meal was spaghetti with tomato sauce. The lentil sauce and chicken was good, but the spaghetti was eh. I guess I am just usually spoiled with good Italian food. The meal was finished with the typical bread and cheese.
After dinner, I headed to my room to finish my power point. I got a bit distracted though and ended up talking to my friend Mats on the phone instead. A while later, my presentation was finished and started to write this blog post. If you’re reading this, I obviously finished that.
I went to bed afterwards in anticipation of my 8 AM class tomorrow.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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