Pays-Basque

Posted by Aaron in Journal

Friday, we didn’t have school for a French Memorial Day. My current host family went to go see their daughter in Marseille, and so I went with my second host family (with whom I have not yet moved in) to Bayonne in Pays-Basque. It is absolutely GORGEOUS there! It has a very particular style of architecture throughout. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen!

I went to le Musée de la Mer (Museum of the Sea) and saw the seals being feed! “Seal” in French is “phoque” and it’s very easy to laugh whenever you hear that. I also learned “pieuvre” and “poulpe,” which both mean “octopus.” It’s really interesting learning words just in living. It’s like I’m a child all over again!  One of the difficult parts about learning a new French word is learning if there are any accents on the letters (there’s the possibility of 5 different accents appearing é è ê ë ç, but accents kind of come naturally after a while) and the gender of the noun.  For those who don’t know, in Latin languages all nouns have a “gender.”  There’s no rhyme or reason to it except with humans and animals, but otherwise you just have to memorize if the noun is masculine or feminine.  For example, “a table” in French is “une table,” and a store is “un magasin.”  Table is feminine and store is masculine, but there’s not really a reason why.  That’s just how it is.  And so for us English-speakers who have the habit of ALL nouns being neutral, we have to learn whether a noun in French is feminine or masculine.  It’s generally easier for people who speak Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian to know which gender each noun is, but they might not always be correct.  Some noun genders differ in the different languages.

And so, today I got back from Bayonne.  I went to mass at 6:30p.m., but it didn’t start until 6:45p.m..  There was some kind of dispute between people from the church and some weird man (I think he was homeless/drunk).  It was kind of scary because this man started walking around near the congregation.  We had no idea what he was going to do.  The police eventually came and escorted him out of the church so that we could start mass in peace.

After mass, I come home and cleaned my room a little.  It’s usually just my desk that is messy.  After I finished cleaning my desk, I wrote an entry in my journal about today.  I hadn’t written in my journal since October 22nd, and I never even completed the entry that day.  I’ve been really lazy with my journal and with my blog, evidently, but I know I am going to regret that severely in the future, so I am doing my best to start writing again.