You can stand under my umbrella

My weekend in the Loire valley was wonderful! I woke up at 5:15am on Saturday and ended up being a little late because I didn't realize the metro doesn't come as often that early in the morning. But it was fine, because one guy was about 45 minutes late. His friend was on the bus in front of me and she was pleading with this guy to wait. She even stalled by asking him to tell her how to buy a train ticket so she could stay behind and take the train with her friend. Almost everybody was speaking English, and I was rather disappointed because half the purpose of the trip was to speak French the whole time. Most people slept the first leg of the trip, which was 3 hours. When we arrived at Cheverny, the site of the first castle, it was raining; luckily I had my umbrella. There were a couple of guys who didn't, so I ended up meeting a couple French guys by sharing my umbrella with them. I still don't know their names; when I asked, one of them said, "Bond. James Bond" and the other one said, "K" (although actually I found out his name is Emmanuel). So I hung around with them most of the weekend, which meant I got to speak French. Sunday night, I could already tell a huge difference in my own speech, which is encouraging and will help motivate me to speak less English around school.

We saw 4 gorgeous castles in the two days, and we stayed in a hostel Saturday night. I was put in a room with another girl from the BU program and these two Japanese women who didn't really speak French, but were good at English. I also saw tons of beautiful flowers and Leonardo da Vinci's house. It's so exciting to be around so much history all the time! I told the French guys that my host mother told me I had a German accent when I speak French and they agreed with her, which was pretty funny. Last night, after seeing The Bald Soprano and The Lesson at Theatre de la Huchette, I walked around in the Latin Quarter for a bit and bought some stuff at a couple souvenir shops. In one, the shop owners started speaking to me in English, and I responded in French like I always do. The first guy said I spoke very good French, and then the other guy was like, "Well maybe she is French!" So that was cool, to be taken for a native speaker. They said I spoke the best French they'd ever heard an American in their store speak. So I gotta keep working at it, so people will hear my French and think, "My God. I can't remember the last time I saw a native French person with blonde hair and blue eyes!"