French and Spiders

There was a spider loose in my house. I woke up this morning with a giant bug bite the size of a half dollar. I learned from a pharmacist how to say spider "l'araignee", although I explained it as "the thing which has the many legs." Lucky for me, after the scabies outbreak I'm stock full of allergy medication and didn't have to buy more. Today while studying for the French exam I have tomorrow (more about that later), I saw a giant spider crawling on my ceiling. My friend said to kill it, I wanted to throw it out the window. She won, I killed it. Now, after googling spider bites with my similarly hypochondriacal friend, I am sitting up in fear of a scenario circa Brokedown Palace where all the spider's little friends are going to come seek revenge on me in the night.

So I am currently studying more for the exam I have tomorrow afternoon which is worth 40% of my grade for my French class to keep a look out for spiders. Probably not the best plan. I need a C for my credits to transfer back to Michigan and worked myself into a panic, certain that I would not pass and would be doomed to an eternal life at the University of Michigan.

Yesterday my teacher told me that I speak French well but I need to work on writing. 40% of the entire grade is writing, 20%, which I have on Wednesday, is speaking. It's a cruel world.

Last night Roomie had a party. When I returned from a group study session, I found her and many a Frenchie smoking and drinking their little hearts out. They invited me to join the party but I said I had to study for my French exam.

"Merde!" Roomie yelled. Merde means shit.

"I mean, I don't think I'm that bad..."I said. And most of the Frenchies (at least the ones who speak some English and understood me), laughed.

Apparently "merde" is what one says to mean good luck in French.

I felt better. I resisted the temptation to practice my spoken French with her friends and instead hid in my room conjugating verbs and perfecting the difference between direct and indirect objects, which, I'm still not really sure I have down. Every half hour or so I would leave my room to ask her and her friends a question.

"One can say: To them the photos I show? or The photos I show to them?" They seemed highly entertained by my questions and I realized I too would find it funny if someone kept asking me questions like, "Do you say "I showed them the photos? or The photos I showed them". Where clearly the answer is obvious to them, not to me.

I've been finding the French language highly irritating these days. They make certain that every noun and adjective has its own gender, yet when it comes to words that involve actual human beings, like "She" and "them" they both go to the masculine, making and woman "him" and any group, even one with a hundred women and one man, the equivalent of "those guys". So I'm supposed to memorize that Michigan is masculine, North Carolina is feminine, and New York is officially referred to as "the state of New York", gender neutral.

Yet, for all my current dislike of French, I find it hard to hate a language in which I have recently discovered the word "se gauffre" which translates literally to "waffle oneself" and refers to the activity of eating waffles, one of my favorites.

I think that's all the updates for now. I hope you'll all wish me merde on my exam and on my mission to defeat the spiders!