As usual, we spent most of the class going over the homework and arguing about it, in a variety of execrable and ungrammatical sentences. Our teacher looked healthy but underweight after his hernia operation, and he was in à mood.
I wrote one of my sentences on the board, “Les généraux sent restés silencieux pendant le discours due président.” (The generals stayed silent during the President’s speech). “Good one,” said someone and we moved on, which is generally what happens when I write on the board.
One classmate read her sentence and the teacher demanded, “Do you know what it means?”
“Well, I did,” she said tentatively.
“When?” he asked.
“When I was doing it,” she said.
At another point, one of us demanded about a sentence, “Why do they do that to us?”
“Because they’re French, and they can,” said the teacher sternly,
Later, one of the men in the class said (in French) that he had gone to France, and he “spoke French like—“
“Comme une vache Espanole,” said the teacher; only half the class understood the slur (like a Spanish cow). The man doggedly continued, saying that he had spoken French “like a native of Provence.”
“Really?” asked the teacher.
“No,” said my classmate and the teacher broke a smile.
My Russian classmate was doggedly trying to understand something in the homework, hadn’t had a chance to share her answer to something, and kept asking questions, and for some reason the teacher said, “You want to teach the class? You’re being rude.” She was not perturbed, but the whole class said, “Awwww” and then we booed him. He looked only mildly baffled.
He gave us some idioms, including “Vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tuer,” which he said was the equivalent of “counting your chickens before they’re hatched” but is a lot more gruesome (sell the hide of the bear before killing it). I preferred another he shared, “Avoir la beurre et l’argent du beurre” (to have the butter and the money for the butter), meaning “have your cake and eat it too.”
Everyone was making plans to bring food the last day of classes the second week of December (we have only two classes left in the term, and no class next week because of Thanksgiving) and discussing whether they were going to go to the OLLI luncheon on the 15th. I do not plan to go to the luncheon. I do not like parties. This class is not my social life, though the people are nice. It is a bizarre and circus-like interactive entertainment that I visit once a week.
I was coughing, because I had a cold a few weeks ago. My buddy in the next seat said I should take a cough drop. “It’s asthma,” I said grimly and used my inhaler.
“What’s inhaler in French?” asked the instructor. “Look it up.”
It’s “un inhalator,” I found out. God damn French gender. Now I will be aware that my inhaler is masculine.
I am going to have to take the class next semester too, just so I don’t have to be the weird new girl any more.