A friend, Jordan Rawling, from Moscow is letting me borrow two books to help me with my study abroad, they are explaining french idioms, for which there are much! We met at a coffee shop before I left and stumbled our way through French. The title means literally “between the hammer and the anvil,” it is taken from one of these books. Future titles of the blog will be in these idioms, so we can learn a little french together!

Lucky I found a few people here, so far, to stumble along with me. Kit Ng is a student in the same program as me. We toured the campus and worked together in between walks to different university building to decode the tour guide’s french. Then we went to a cafe where we stumbled once again to order our food, ultimately resulting in our waitress laughing hysterically at us. There was a single man next to us, that would help us translate to the waitress.  We became fast friends with him and discussed differences between culture, accents, foods, and peoples.

I am realizing more and more how little I know, and I find myself in between the hammer and anvil. However, it is only there that a craft instrument can be form so I’ll just take one hit at a time.

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Describing place

My Airbnb is quite an interesting set up. Let me give you a rhapsodic verbal picture.

I live above the big, fat black pussycat (a hiphop club)  right next to Austerlitz Place, in basically the city center, with an middle aged couple where curtains are doors, and where two dragons (or giant lizards) live.

 

I hear:

the resonate echoing rings from the Cathedral’s tower

the yells and screams from children at recess a block down the street

Beethoven’s moonlight sonata being practiced in the flat facing mine

a band playing humorous traditional Alsacian melodies, becoming louder and then softer as they pass by

The sounds of drunkards yelling in french every morning at 2AM, to which neighbours just respond with “SHH” (but loudly)

The tritone of french ambulances, which reminds me of my aural skills class in college

The purs and chous of the fat, plentiful pigeons who have made homes on the rooftops and window sills

the sound of the little bells on the bikes to alert pedestrians that they are coming behind them

What is next for me? I start school on September 8th, where I will be in a class of 15 people from all over the world learning french.

Merci pour lire

A la Prochain!

DCM