About Brest

Been here here for 2 and a half weeks. So far it's been good if just a little boring. Brest is a small town you see, so there's nothing besides downtown (which is about the size of Orchard Rd minus the shopping malls and the beach and the 3 tourist attractions: the Musee de Beaux Arts, the Chateau de Brest and the Oceanopolis, which I heard is like Underwater world.

The host family is really nice and I can really feel my French improving. At least now I can speak without as much hesitation and pausing cos of loss of words. School's fun, all we do in class is talk. Although the 1st week was better cos it was another teacher who's really funny and all we did in class was laugh and talk. He kept telling us his wife is stupid (Ma femme est stupide) cos she sold his car and bike and replaced them with a bicycle cos it's more environmentally-friendly and also because she likes Chinese operas. We have 2 Japanese students in our class and one day we were talking and he mentioned Greenpeace. The Japanese students didn't know what it was and in a bit to try to make them understand, he pronounced it as "greener peacer" OMG that was mean but so hilarious. but now we had a change of teachers so we just talk.

Oh, and only NUS is kiasu enough to ask for extra afternoon lessons for us. the other students can leave at 1pm while we had to stay back after lunchtime (which is 1-2pm) for tutorials, which are actually blogging sessions in French. They said that was what NUS suggested to them. We only went twice and stopped going. hahahaha

We have new students every week cos the turnover rate is quite high. and some of the students here have really interesting backgrounds. For example, the new guy in our class this week is a Canadian who needs to learn French for his job. He works for Doctors without Borders. Cool huh?

oh and another thing: the weather here's really temperamental. if it's sunny it's fabulous but when it's rainy or cloudy it's really horrible cos it gets really cold and windy. I told my host that I skipped class in the afternoon to go to a beach which is an hour away but really good (will post up pics in the future it's at this place called "Le Conquet") cos the weather was good we had to grab the chance or we'll regret and she's like "ahh you're thinking like a Breton now. if we wanna do something like going to the beach we can't procrastinate cos it might rain for the next few days or weeks and then we'll regret" she said all this in French by the way. I speak to my host family in French cos they can't really speak English well. thus, i'm forced to practice my french-speaking skills, which is really good for me.

I can't think of anything else to say except that i've been eating like a pig. i swear i'm hungry all the time and i don't know why. Val can be my witness. gotta exercise when i get back man seriously.

ok gonna read "Beauty and the Beast" in french which my hosts kindly lent me after hearing that i bought childrens' books in french to practice my reading and grammar.

Au voir!