une année à pau

Words words words. I promise that someday soon I will have some more photos. :] I stopped carrying my camera everywhere because now that I’m going to classes, I want to try to blend in as much as possible, and nothing says “I’m an American, look at me, look at me!” like taking a picture of the dining hall. Haha. 

Today I had my first class in Phonetics. For an hour, I sat in a lab with a group of other students, and we listened to tapes and repeated stuff aloud. Then, after that, I had a 15-minute-long session that was just me and a professor. She was really hard on me! But in a really good way. She was really nice, but she was not afraid to tell me that I was wrong. Way wrong. 

We focused just on the letter “R” for fifteen minutes… but fifteen hours would have been more appropriate! It is so hard. I found that I was actually overcompensating in words with a heavy “R” - I kept trying to stress it, because we never do that in English, but I was trying so hard that I was OVERstressing it. So the professor drew me a picture of where my tongue should be and everything. I’ve never concentrated THAT MUCH on the little details of language. It was infinitely helpful and very insightful. For the rest of the day, I noticed every word that had an “R” in it!! I’m looking forward to my next session with her, on Monday.

On Friday and Saturday, I’m going to San Sebastian and St. Jean-de-Luz, the Basque region in France and Spain. I’m really excited! It will be with USAC again, so the hotel and everything is already taken care of, which is SO NICE. It will be really fun to be on vacation again instead of going to school. I still feel like I’m on vacation when I’m in Pau - but I know that feeling will fade in proportion to the amount of homework I start to receive!!! Haha! 

Anyway, I get to wake up at 10 tomorrow instead of 9, which is always a plus. Looking forward to the extra hour of sleep I’m about to receive. :] More interesting stuff next time, I promise!

Missing everyone lots and lots!!