Le 101ieme jour: Il a une poussette./He has a stroller-pushchair.

Woke up this morning to beautiful fresh French "morning" air as I intentionally had left my window open overnight. It was a gorgeous way to wake up. Got ready for the day - in and out of the shower, etc. Went to eat breakfast and Michel had Woody sitting up on the table out on the patio and he was cutting/combing his hair! When he finished and Woody jumped off the table, he came in and explained to me that he'd been doing it for over 2 hours. While he was talking to me, Woody was going crazy...he wanted Michel to keep combing his fur! What a crazy dog indeed! :-)

Had my last Lit. class this morning where she went over our exam, how to prepare for it, etc. I don't anticipate any problems on this exam, as she basically gave us the questions that will be on the exam. I spent the rest of the day eating my lunch and working on my art history paper. With the recent arrival of beautiful weather (mid to high 70s), we'd been going up on the roof to hang out during lunch, and have little picnics. I didn't go up today because I was being a busy bee working on my paper, but the directrice discovered that there were students up there and she went up and told them it was not allowed and that they had to come down. Oh well!

At 4:30 I headed out with Jenn for our university class. We popped by Mme Deronne's office to talk to her about our assignment. Because we don't follow the same schedule as they do at the university, Jenn and I get a different final exam assignment. However, Mme Deronne wasn't in her office. We arrived to class about 10 minutes early. -- My rule of thumb since arriving in France has been as follows: If you don't know how you are supposed to act or what you are supposed to do in a particular situation, watch over French people and follow suit. -- This rule has served me quite well. For example, I'm pretty sure that you aren't supposed to enter the classroom before the professor has arrived. However, today seemed to be the exception, as many of the French students/people entered the room before Mme Deronne had gotten there. I don't know how the circumstances were different than other times that they've waited, but I followed suit.

We got our midterm exams back (we don't get to keep them, but we got to look at them). Jenn and I both received an 11/20. Before you freak out, that's actually a really good grade. To give you a frame of reference, Mme Deroone told the whole class that the french students received between an 8 and an 11. Granted, our grades are adjusted because we're not native french speakers, but still, that means we were on the same level as the native French speakers. -- Our directrice will adjust/translate our grade into an actual letter grade for our transcripts. --

Also, Mme Deronne gave us our "final paper" assignment. We have to pick an artist, talk about his works, give examples, put him in context, and talk about what he contributed to the "nature morte" style. It only has to be 3 to 4 pages! How fantastic is that!?!?

Claudie was in on the computer and Michel came in, telling her about he had combed/cut Woody's fur. He called in Woody and then had him hop up on the swivel chair, at which point Michel said, "Il a une poussette," thus inspiring the title of today's post.

Claudie showed me a forwarded email that one of her friends sent her about english-french translation and pronounciation. The following is an example:

• FRENCH: donne-moi de l'argent!
• ENGLISH: Give me some money!
• FRENCH pronunciation of ENGLISH: Guy vomit sous mon nez. (Guy [a male name] is vomiting under my nose.

There are others also, but I don't feel like typing/pasting them all in here. Then Michel and Claudie started explaining to me that these are similar to what they call "des exercices du theatre" literally, theater exercises, but more like speaking warm-ups. Then they started rattling off tongue twisters

Dinner was chicken (cut up like stir fry style in some kind of sauce/juice), ratatouille over rice. I don't care how many times she serves it, I love ratatouille!

After dinner, we watched The Outlaw: Josey Wales (L'hors loi: Josey Wales), a movie created and acted in by Clint Eastwood. Michel recorded it to bring down to Togo to show the people in the village. They are certainly all about there westerns here. Then we watched a short show about jazz/Harlem/New Orleans, and then watched the Breaking Point (Point Break) with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. It just made me want to watch Blue Crush.