Sunday 23 March 2008

Easter Sunday

Today has been a really pleasant day doing nothing. Regis and Ann invited me to Regis’s parents house for Easter lunch so after a leisurely meal I returned home replete but really tired. Regis’s parents don’t speak English so I had to really concentrate on understanding and participating in the conversation. Shattered I may be but I’m also really pleased with just how much I did understand, I know I would not have understood anywhere near the amount I did had it been this time last year. There is no way I can rest on my laurels though as I was really frustrated by what I couldn’t say when I wanted to join in to the conversation, so that’s my goal for this year, to be able to speak as well as understand conversational French.

Over the holiday period, my Internet connection has degraded dramatically, If I can get connected it is at half the speed or less than I normally get and by the evening the connection fails altogether. I don’t think this is a fault with the line this time as my telephone line is fine so I guess that Orange are working on the servers yet again. I do wish they would warn users but the worst thing is I expect the outcome will be very similar to the ‘upgrades’ to Microsoft’s operating system.. A whole new lot of functionality that you don’t really need or want, that harbours more bugs and slows the system down. Now all I have to do is wait until I get connected again and then it may let me post this. If last night is anything to go by, I won’t get a line again until the morning.

3 comments:

VP said...

Hi Deb,

Firstly Happy Easter and I see things are moving on apace re the installation of Mod Cons at your place! The soup looks good too.

I know what you mean about foreign languages - I'm learning Spanish and understand far more than I can speak. It's frustrating isn't it? Still, you're in exactly the right place to learn.

Finally, I thought I'd pop over to answer the question you posed over at mine re watering. I came up with the idea myself, though I can't guarantee I didn't read about it many moons ago and it stayed lodged in the depths of my brain before it resurfaced when I had assembled about 40 plastic bottles on my plot! You're spot on about the reusing and the plants covering up the tubes eventually.

aims said...

I've been trying to study Italian as we are hoping to spend a month there in the future...but because we have no set date for that holiday - it's a slow go on my part in trying to learn.

We had to take French in school in Ontario as half of the province is French. However the French they taught had almost nothing in common with the French that was spoken in the area...very difficult to combine the two...

I like that you have made this your goal...

Living the Dream said...

Hi, I have made it my goal as well but I begin to wonder just how many goals we are allowed and which ones do you pick that are the most important. Perhaps a bedroom for people to sleep is more important. Then, no, because you need to go to the shops to ask for stuff. That's OK, but then they answer you and mess it all up!! Frustrated??? Oh yes! :-)