une année à pau

Wow. I cannot believe that I’ve only been here for a week and a half!! It’s ridiculous. I feel like months and months have passed. It seems like a year is going to be forever… 

Today, I didn’t do much. I stayed at home because the buses don’t run today and I didn’t really need anything urgently, so I decided to be lazy. :] Instead I read some more Emma - I am really enjoying it - I want to buy more books in English because I have a feeling that a lot of weekends are going to be like this. I think that might be somewhat hard to do, hahaha. We shall see. I should probably be reading in French, anyway.

“Reading” is actually one of the interests that my host mom and I have in common. She loves to read. She hasn’t read a lot of the books that I have read, but she gets lots of news magazines delivered to the house, and she told me that I could have them when she was done, so I’m excited about that, because that means I will start reading in French. 

Tonight after my lazy day I had dinner with Véronique. She made bowtie pasta and ratatouille. It was delicious as usual! When I told her so, she said, “My children always tell me that I cook the same things, and that they all taste bad!” And I said, “They must be crazy.” Haha. We talked the whole time in French, and I could tell that my accent is somewhat improving… slowly. When I speak slowly. When I get going quickly, I revert back to Americanized right away. Eh. She is a great conversationalist because she is patient, and she corrects me, and she asks questions. I can totally see why people recommend living with a French family. It would be so lonely in the residence halls!!

I am missing my family lots, though. It was very odd to be stuck up in the house knowing that no one within contact was even on the same continent as I am. I feel like you can’t have days like that in the U.S., though. It was lonely, but in a way, it was very peaceful. Sometimes I can be a very introverted person, and it was nice to have nothing to do but lay around and cook for myself and take a shower and read a book. 

It was kind of windy today, and cloud-covered! I thought for sure that it would rain, but my record of seeing not a drop of rain in Pau stands strong. We shall see what this week has to say about that…