This is a post 'cause I'm not going to do my homework.

I need to read about 50 pages and write a paper about the main character. Better write a blog post first. And write down my favorite French recipes so far.  And watch some youtube videos.  And read a book for recreation. And take a nap. And discuss the French Healthcare system with hostdad. And...not do my homework.  Crud.

Instead of doing my homework let's just talk about it instead.  It's a great little novel we're reading, "Kiffe, Kiffe" It's not like literature level reading necessarily, but it prompts good discussion.  I mostly like it because I'm learning a lot of slang and youth lingo. Mostly swear words.  That's fun!

For my internship class today we had to go downtown and do a survey, asking passers-by about their opinions on the healthcare system, the age of retirement, the 35-hour work week, and if universities prepared students well for the working world.  It was horrifying.  Confrontation isn't my thing, even in English. Make me do it French, and you can guarantee I'll not be having a good time.  It doesn't help that there are already a lot of other people continually asking others to sign petitions, either.  Most of them thought we were doing that and would completely ignore us and run off. However, clever that I am, I found that if I just yelled (in French this time) right away, "EXCUSE ME I'M AMERICAN," that they would often stop out of interest/probably pity. We had about a 60% success rate I think.  I'm glad we did it, though. I was able to speak to some authentic French people, and learned actual useful information about the culture.  For example, a lot of people are not for raising the retirement age back to 60 for all jobs.  Many people opined that some jobs are too physically taxing as a person ages, so retirement age should vary with the job. Very interesting stuff here.

I have a test this week in both Methodology and Phonetics.  I'm more excited than nervous. I think. Methodology shouldn't be too bad. If it's like what we've been doing, we will only have to read an article and then summarize within a set amount of words.  Not too hard and kind of fun. I believe for Phonetics the professor is going to speak some phrases and we'll have to write the phrase phonetically, like, "c'est bien" would be [sɛbjɛ̃]. I think it'll be pretty neat, if not somewhat difficult. LETS DO THIS.

Enough about cours, let's talk caves.  Yeah, guys, caves. As in I went to one this weekend.

This one was during a light show set to some neat opera music. Whoa!

La grotte de Clamouse.  Neat place, only about a 30-minute drive away.  It was super interesting, but also I don't know a lot of speleology vocabulary, so I kind of missed a lot information.  Let's be real, I don't even know a lot of speleology vocabulary in English.  I'll venture you probably don't either.  It's okay. Let's educate ourselves. Together. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speleology Knowledge is power! Shoutout to hostfather Pierre for this one, guys.  We finished lunch, and he looked at me and said, "Wanna go to a cave?" Um yes. Yes, I do. Always.  So ten minutes later we were in the car for the cave.  Love this host family, guys. 

Near this little grotte was a cute little village, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.  When I say cute, guys, I mean this was literally the cutest, most quaint little place ever.  Like this where I want to spend my old, dying days.  Also there were tons of cats roaming the petite, little rues (streets). I saw at least seven in the hour I was there.  Anyway, here's the place. 

Look I learned how to save room and put pictures side by side!

So this little village is situated in a valley, so everything is kind of tiered, like in the picture on the right.  It truly is like a scene out of the movies about knights and kings and frickle frackle like that. I love it so hard guys. Also since everything runs down, there are tons of little gutter like things on the sides of all the streets.  Gutter makes them sound ugly, but they're actually like little petite rivers you can walk by.  Also there is an actual petite river. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll be getting another blog post about this before the semester is out.  I'll take more pictures, because its really hard to truly describe the wonder of this place. Just know you should visit if you're ever in the area. 

I really ought to get to my homework now, but before I go, one last picture. 

Some of you might be asking, "Shawn, why do you have a picture with a horse?"

My answer to this is, "Guys. Why not?" Also I'm not entirely sure. I was walking home, there was a horse, I had a phone with a camera... The rest is history. Adios mis amigos!