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Happy December! It is suddenly a whole lot less cold than before… because that makes sense as winter comes on. (or, you know, not at all) Still hasn’t snowed yet, and I must say that I’m really hoping it does. I’ve never actually seen snow fall, and I think that it would definitely be worth the freezing temperatures… at least for a bit.

Today was the end of the first trimester at school and I am proud to report that I am passing French high school! As far as me being excited about getting 10/20s and things like that, I feel like there is something I should explain about grades here. Teachers grade ridiculously hard here. 10/20 is a decent score, even for the French kids. A 14 is a really good score. An 18 is a really really amazingly good score. A 20 is impossible except for in math where you can do something unarguable perfect. (A good example of this is my 18/20 oral score in English. I have no clue how that woman grades.) My “conseil de classe” is sometime today. This is a meeting with all of my teachers and the two class representatives, where they talk about whether we try hard enough or not, and then they write down all the remarks they make and send it home to us and our families. That is another thing about the crazy hard grading -- not only do teachers read everyone’s scores out loud in front of the class, they also write things like “your child obviously do no work at home and has never ever tried in my class. I will make sure that they are held back this year.” Or “Your son/daughter should not be on an academic path as they clearly do not have the mental prowess to perform in my class.” Yeah, it’s tough. I am REALLY happy that my grades don’t count this year. Christmas holidays start on the 23rd. Oh my heck! What is that? The good part is they last until January somethingth.

Geneviève is doing a lot better, and still has until next Friday off of work.

I’m kind of sick of what we’re doing in Theater class. We’re doing “clown exercises” which are all fine and good for a while, but after two months of them I get really tired of exaggerated emotions. Once in a while I’d just love to do something normalish. A scene that we get more than 15 minutes to work on? Anything? No… I guess not. Instead we get to wear clown noses. I don’t much like clowns.

I really hate masculin/feminin rules and Vousvoyement/Tutoiment (informal and formal ways to say ‘you’ (and for those of you that speak french, I think I spelled them wrong... oh well)). It makes life a lot more difficult. Today I accidentally tutoi-ed a teacher, and while she knew that it was just a mistake and not a lack of respect issue, two girls (who lately have been OMG pissing me off) were like “AHHH KENDRA!!! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” and I was like “um… chillax people, sometimes I make mistakes,” but they kept looking back at me all shocked-like and my face got all red. I know the rules, it is just when I’m in the middle of speaking sometimes I forget. The other thing that absolutely kills me is, well I don’t know how to describe it, so I’ll write it like this;
English Translation – (1) “Nevermind” (2) “You are nice”
French Familiar – (1) “Laisse Tomber” (2) “Tu es sympa”
French Polite – (1) “Laissez Tomber” (2) “Vous êtes sympa”

Ok! Explanation. Number 2 has the article in it, "you," “tu,” “vous,” there you go. When I have the article there, I can conjugate the verb after it with pretty much no problems. However! When the article is dropped, (re: example 1--nevermind, as opposed to never-you-mind) I completely forget to change from familiar, which I use with pretty much everyone in my entire life, to polite, which I have to use with teachers and people who work at stores and things.

Don’t worry if you didn’t understand that whole thought. I’m not so sure it made sense.

The Christmas season has officially begun. This can be seen (and heard!) every weekend by the flashing lights hung EVERYWHERE and the obnoxiously loud Christmas carols that screech out of radio things hung on every streetlamp.
ahhhhhhh!!!

For anyone who knows my sincere appreciation of “the Christmas season,” you know what kind of pain this puts me in.


As far as reader interactivity, I feel like we need some on this blog. SO! Either tell me something to take a picture of and to put online (does not include teachers, sorry, mr pirate man will have to be an end of the year treat) or tell me to describe something in detail. This might also help my ridiculously rambling style of writing that pretty much seems to go nowhere.

And on that note! That is everything I can think of to write about for now!


Love you guys,

Kendra