My first French lesson with the new tutor went extremely well, gang. And it lasted 2 hours. She spoke in French from the minute I got there, very rarely switching to English and then only when I was completely hopeless re: understanding what she was trying to say. I was totally flabbergasted that I could readily understand almost everything she said. But I still had a lot of trouble replying. It did, in no way, trip off the tongue. However, after struggling for an hour to be understood, and to actually converse, she said, "Your accent is very good -- I'm impressed. You speak French beautifully." (Aside from my grasping vocabulary, that is.)

I was floored by this. Truly. She is a very strict teacher, born and raised in France, a retired French teacher. She doesn't lavish compliments. It made my day.

However, I have TONS of homework between now and lundi (Monday) when I have my next lesson. It is awesome to behold -- the many, many verbs I have to conjugate.

And last night, while sleeping and having a very intense dream about living with M. again in a really nice apartment in New York, our "landlord" sneaked in and was practically ransacking our apartment in a very menacing way; M. was sleeping in the other room and I was desperately trying to appease the landlord. I had no idea what we'd done that had made him so angry and I didn't want to lose the apartment & be thrown out. However, the landlord was speaking entirely in French and I had to speak to him in French, as well, in a very desperate, urgent sort of way. I finally cried in anguish, "Parlez-moi en anglais, s'il vous plait!!"

And that's when I awoke.  Apparently doing homework in my dreams, thank you very much.

Adventures in Adult Land

As in behaving like a grown-up; rare for moi... I finally got the enormous scanner up and running, and today I begin scanning the novel, one page at a time, into a Word file. I am really, really looking forward to the tediousness of it. It is perhaps why I've put it off as long as I possibly could. If I weren't so overwhelmed by the intensity of the deadline barreling down on me, I would take a few moments to be thrilled and awed by this indescribably fabulous scanner. I kinda can't believe I actually own it. However, it sure is large. If I didn't have such a delightfully lovely fake white Christmas tree (fake tree, not fake white), the scanner would undoubtedly be the focal point of my living room (yes, I moved it). It scans, it copies, it prints. It sings selections from Sweeney Todd. (No, wait, I think that was me singing.) Regardless, I do love it but I am not looking forward to the month of January. Sadly, it has not even arrived yet and already I will be glad when it's over.

Okay. On that note, I better get scanning, gang. Thanks for visiting! See ya.