#I had a couple different spanish and french teachers

[martinesabroad]

Ryman: First Week at International School

Hello. A couple of days ago, I finished my first week of school. It was okay. I made maybe two friends. I'm not too close with them yet, but we hang out and talk a little bit. One of them is named , Niko for short. He's from Poland and really likes soccer. The other one is named Lewis. He's from Australia and has a really cool, funny accent. He likes to draw and is really chill.

I like school because it's a lot more free than elementary school. It's kind of like every man for themselves. If you're late to class, it's completely your fault. You don't have a teacher that leads you along in a line. You just walk around with your backpack. It's kind of just on you, more freedom, you know?

One thing that's annoying about my school is that it ends really late, like 5 p.m. But, it starts at 9, which is an upgrade from my old school back in Croatia. That one started at 8 and ended at 3:15. This one starts at 9 and ends at 4:50 for my class, and 4:40 for my brother's. It's a little bit annoying, but I'll get through it.

Oh yeah, I also made a friend named Mark. His family moved from Ukraine when the war started in February 2022. He's completely Ukrainian and doesn't speak great English. I'm about to play a game with him in a couple minutes. He's really nice. It's crazy to think about how he just left his home when the war started.

I have about seven periods, all the normal classes. We have a lesson called business this year. It's about marketing and how people sell businesses. It's pretty fun. It's one of the new classes that I've never had before. Then, there's an elective subject where you can choose from a bunch of activities. Every teacher has a subject that you can do on these elective subject days. You just have to select two that you want, your first choice and your second choice. I chose cooking and geography.

The food at the school is okay. My old school back in Croatia had better food, but it's not too bad for school food. A lot of the teachers at my school are from Britain or Ireland because it is a British international school. My class is mostly Spanish kids. I'd say 45% are Spanish, 30% Ukrainian, 10% Russian, and the others are from all around, like American, Asian, Canada. We have a lot of different nationalities in our class which is really cool.

A lot of kids at my school are really into soccer. They all have really good skills. It's a big thing here in Spain, especially since they've got Barcelona and Madrid. Everybody in my class, including all the girls and boys, are really good at soccer. They've all got really good skills. Sometimes we play as a class, a big class game. We have recess on the roof, which sounds weird, but on the roof there's a soccer field, well not a field but a court, futsal court, but outside. There's also a basketball court and some turf where you can hang out. It's really cool up there.

I've got three language classes: German, Spanish, and French. I'm really trying to focus on Spanish right now because my mom is learning Spanish through classes. Our whole family is trying to learn Spanish because we live in Valencia, Spain. I'm progressing a lot. A week ago, I didn't really know much Spanish at all.

Now I'm starting to learn. I know colors, numbers up to 15 or 20. I know how to introduce myself and maybe order at a restaurant. I'm getting there and I think I'm doing really well.

I kind of knew French from last year because I did French all year. In Croatia, you could choose German or French. My mom chose French and I wanted to do French too, just because it's a more fun language to learn. So, I'm doing good at French.

Then there's German, of which I know literally none because I've only had two classes. But it seems pretty cool and I'm excited to learn more.

-Ryman

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I’m curious to get your take on something. As someone who studied linguistics, what’s your take on terms like Latinx, a word being used in the US to identify non-binary gender fluid people of Latin descent? It’s meant to me inclusive but also deeply unpopular within the Latin community. I was born in Latin America, live in the states, am very supportive of the gay community but HATE this term. Spanish (my native language) is gendered. Adjectives and other conjugations have to agree with the gender of the noun. I’m an ally to the gay community but it’s silly things like this that make people take a step back sometimes. Yes, tolerance is important but wanting to change the morphology and structure of a language simply to accommodate a portion of the population is kind of ridiculous. Thoughts?

You really dumped a bunch of gasoline in my inbox and asked me to light a match lmao

Okay, there are a lot of things going on here and I want to address them all. From a linguistic standpoint—meaning from the standpoint of simply studying how humans use and modify language—I think “Latinx” is interesting because people were presented with a problem: how can we express gender neutrality in a gendered language? Seeing what people’s minds come up with in these kinds of situations is objectively interesting. It’s why I said recently that something like doublespeak in 1984 is nonsense, because humans find ways around obstacles in language all the time.

I sympathize with people who want more gender neutral language, and I’d be interested to hear how non-binary people born in Latin America, for example, feel about speaking a language with grammatical gender and if/how that impacts their experience. How do they express themselves in Spanish? Or how do non-binary people express themselves in other gendered languages like Italian and French? It’s an interesting question.

With all of that said, I have absolutely seen the consensus in the United States by the people who are actually supposed to be described by the term that they hate it. Even terms like “Hispanic” and “Latino” can be controversial because people (especially those whose families haven’t been in the US for a long time) tend to more readily describe themselves by nationality, like, “I’m Mexican” or “I’m Venezuelan” as opposed to, “I’m Hispanic.” There’s already this issue with trying to condense different people and identities into a neat little category on the census that fits America racial ideas, and when you add a term that goes against how the language actually functions into the mix, I think it’s understandable that people will be resistant to it. The reason why I, personally, don’t really use “Latinx” is because most people from Latin America don’t use it, this has been confirmed by polling, and I don’t want to use a term that the actual people are uncomfortable with.

I should note that I actually had no idea how this term was even supposed to be pronounced for years, because I only ever saw it on the internet; I thought it was like “latinks” (the way we usually pronounce an “x” in English) and my brain skidded to a halt when I first heard, “Latin-ex.” I was actually talking about this very issue with my co-teacher a couple of weeks ago, who lived in Mexico for years and taught ESL to immigrant teens in Texan high schools, and she had no idea it was actually pronounced that way, either. I’m bringing this up to point out how heavily confined to the internet this term was for a long time, and how little this term is still used in real life. Again, I think this partly explains the resistance people have to this term, because it didn’t happen naturally irl, it’s an internet word that people are trying to bring into the regular world.

I do think the morphological rules and phonotactics of Spanish play a role in people disliking them term, too, because yeah, using an “x” as a kind of neutral marker might work in English, but not Spanish. Grammatical gender is baked into the language’s DNA, and I don’t see that ever changing. It would be too drastic. I think that even if people aren’t opposed to being inclusive, most Spanish speakers kind of have the immediate reaction of, “What?? But that’s not how that works.”

So, yeah, I understand why people dislike the term. I don’t see it catching on widespread outside of the internet, at least not in the near future. I certainly don’t think people outside of a community should say, “You don’t like this term to describe yourselves? Too bad! Use it!” 

The only thing I’m going to push back on is the idea that pushing a term like this would justifiably “make people take a step” back from trans rights (because that’s really what this is, it’s not about sexual orientation but gender identity), because as fucking stupid as I think “folx”** is, I don’t think there’s a reason to turn one’s back on trans people. I’m not saying that you’re doing this btw, I’m just preemptively putting it out there because plenty of people go, “Ugh, these marginalized people are being annoying and loud, therefore bigotry against them is justified.” And that’s a big no from me. There’s so much backlash against trans people in our culture now, and clunky internet terms don’t compare to the violence and animosity happening in real life. I think this whole thing reflects the very interesting cultural moment we’re in with increased visibility of trans and non-binary people, and people trying to find new ways to express their identities, and there are going to be clumsy attempts that really don’t work out long-term, but that’s inevitable.

**(“FOLKS” IS LITERALLY ALREADY GENDER NEUTRAL BECAUSE ENGLISH DOES NOT HAVE GRAMMATICAL GENDER LIKE ADDING THE “X” DOES NOTHING, NOT EVEN CHANGE THE PRONUNCIATION)

[jmflowers]

Fanfic questions… 7, 17, 40, 66 and 91 please 😊

7. Tell us about the plot of the first fanfic you ever wrote.

            The first time I ever wrote fanfiction, I think I was about 12? Maybe 11. I didn’t have access to fandom spaces the way I do now, so I posted each chapter as video clips on my YouTube page, where I had a small following for my fanvideos. (I was also a little brat who thought threatening people to comment or give it a thumbs up in order to receive the next chapter was appropriate.)

The story was called The Letter Elle for the show Ghost Whisperer, pre-Jim’s death. I gave them a child (a little girl named Elle) who was exploring her own understanding of her inherited abilities. I probably still have it somewhere in my stuff, but I’m sure it was Not Good. Hilariously, the show gave the main characters a child a short while later and then did a time jump to allow for an exploration similar to the one I’d been writing about. Maybe they should’ve hired me.

17. What is your favourite line you’ve ever written?

            I don’t think I could narrow down one specific line; I have a tendency to forget what I’ve written once it’s posted. First to come to mind is most of She Will Still Love You because it was so cathartic and my first soirée into second-person point of view.

“When, really, what you should’ve been doing was rebuilding. Taking the chopped down limbs of your trees and building a log cabin out of them. Rubbing out the knots and sanding down the rough edges and turning it into a place you could call home.

You need to learn how to call your body home again.”

40. Best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.

            There’s been a lot of good stuff through the years. The one that comes to mind most often was from a teacher when I was 14, who handed back an assignment that I’d earned 99% on (the highest grade she ever gave out) and then told me I wasn’t finished. She pushed me to go beyond in my writing and I owe a lot of my drive to her. The quiet pride in her face when I was published for the first time a couple years later is a core memory.

In the fanfiction realm, a reader reached out a few years ago regarding Extraordinary Measures and said some things that made me cry. She pops up every now and then, as our fandom paths have crossed a couple times, and it feels like a warm hug each time.

I’m incredibly grateful for any person who has ever reached out to me about that fic, especially when they tell me it made them cry or feel something they weren’t expecting. It was one of the most challenging writing endeavours I’d ever embarked on at that point in my life and I’m so proud that I completed it.

I also love when a reader leaves a comment in a different language. That you took the time to read something in English and then still write me a message after, even if you’re not sure I’ll be able to understand it, means so much. It’s like opening a little surprise bag when I go off to translate them. I’ve been getting Spanish and French most recently.

66. When have you felt the most confident in your writing?

            For fanfiction, the most recent confidence boost was actually you commenting on my Hygge Universe stuff. Knowing that what I’m writing is not your vibe in the slightest, but that I was still able to reel you in… pretty impressed with myself. I’m also always more confident when I’m getting lots of comments or kudos emails, or the hit count is rising quickly, like most writers, even if that isn’t why I write...

In terms of school, a professor telling me to pitch a show to network because she wanted to watch it was pretty fulfilling. And professionally, holding my own in my first writer’s roundtable was intensely gratifying. As well as finding out my favourite thing I wrote for them was picked up by network, after the root concept they’d given me to work from had been denied by that network the year before. I’d love to see that story become a television series.  

91. How has your writing style changed over the years?

            Oh man, where to begin? Early on in my fic-writing career, I wrote primarily in first-person point of view. Usually past-tense, I think. Over time, I began to explore different tenses and then had a period where I really played with writing second-person point of view. I also wrote much shorter pieces – if I got to 1000 words, that was good enough for me. Editing was minimal. Story content was very dark and angsty.

Nowadays, things are much longer, obviously. I’ve been mostly writing in third-person point of view for a couple years now. I think I’ve settled into a tense that makes sense for Hygge Universe, which is the lump sum of my fanfiction writing right now. I spend a lot more time editing than I ever did before and the story contents are heaps more uplifting and positive. I also think I just have a better understanding of human emotion than I did years ago, when I was trapped in a fog of depression and physical pain. Screenwriting has made me ruthless in terms of cutting things out that aren’t working and I think that’s reflected in my work in terms of like, anything present in a story is there because it’s integral to the overall plotline. I also appreciate that my writing now is not riddled with the same word six times a paragraph, haha. I hope my growth over the last ten or so years is obvious in my work.

fic writing asks

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #117 (Year 3/Week 13):

Victoria is an unusual low-budget, German crime thriller, and much to my surprise, my most interesting film of the week! It’s my second with lovely Spanish actress Laia Costa (after the romantic ‘Only you’), and my 8th ‘Single-take film’ (*).

The technical trickery for a 2+ hour long movie filmed in one long take by a single camera, wasn’t visually impressive, and definitely far from the artistic heights of ‘Russian Arc’, or ‘1917′. Basically, one nimble cameraman followed the developing story into clubs, rooftops, cars, streets, bars, and hotels without calling attention to itself.

Victoria is a young Spanish waitress in Berlin. After dancing all-night at a techno club, she meets a group of 4 small-time criminals, and hangs with them, getting drunk and stoned. Drawn to the aura of danger, she inexplicably agrees to join them, and ends up driving a stolen van for an adventure that quickly turns lethal.

The story itself didn’t gel until around the 45 minute mark. Just as I was ready to quit the movie, she sits down to a piano in an empty cafe, and after some coaxing from a guy, she beautifully plays one of Liszt Mephisto waltzes, disclosing that had studied music all her life, and had to give it up because she wasn’t good enough. From that point, the second half ‘tied the room together’ into an absorbing bundle. 8/10.

(*) After ‘Rope’, ‘Russian arc’, ‘Lost in London’, ‘Birdman’, ‘1917′, ‘Boiling Point’ and ‘Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’.

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4 more with Léa Seydoux:

🍿 “... Some people, though talented, need help to thrive. They languish when left to their own devices...”

Léa Seydoux is so attractive that just watching her on the screen is like experiencing pure beauty, my definition of a superstar. My Wife's Romance is a slow psychological thriller about a woman whose husband disappears in mysterious circumstances. A different kind of a French drama, by a Tajik director, and with a parallel Tajik sub-plot. 7/10.

🍿 The Beautiful Person is a modernized teen drama adapted from an impenetrable 1678 historical novel. The many confusing intrigues of unrequited love among a group of 16 year-old high-schoolers and their teachers replace the complicated royal courtships of the classic story. But the only redeeming feature for me here was Seydoux’s ethereal beauty, which also effected everybody in the story who came in contact with her.

Strangely, both these two unrelated films ended with her saying the exact same sentence: “You will never see me again”. 2/10.

🍿 Prada: Candy, a 3 minute perfume ad, directed by Wes Anderson And Roman Coppola, about a threesome with Léa Seydoux, Umbrellas of Cherbourg-style.

🍿 Time doesn’t stand still, a meaningless artsy short film about caresses and goodbyes in one of them high-ceiling apartments of the good arrondissements.  

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First re-watch in 20+ years, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ang Lee’s wuxia fairy tale was the first foreign-language film to break the $100 million mark in the US. With the beatific Zhang Ziyi. (Photo Above).

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2 with French character actor Richard Bohringer:

🍿 It’s not very clear through the first half of the French story The Grand Highway what is it about; Innocence Lost when 2 kids love each other like in ‘Jeux interdits’? A childless couple who despises each other like ‘Le Chat’? Or a rural drama like the nostalgic ‘Jean de Florette’?

A 9-year-old Parisian boy is sent for a summer to a small village in Bretagne, while his pregnant mother waits to give birth. He stays with the mother’s friend and her husband, whose relationship is cold and hostile, and he's befriended by a wild 10-year-old girl who teaches him the ways of the world. It’s a beautiful, romantic and evocative drama. Highly recommended - 7/10.

🍿 Angelina Jolie’s gorgeous 4th film, By The Sea, is about voyeurism and depression, but it ended up being an empty vanity exercise. The glamorous and wealthy Jolie and Brad Pitt arrives at one of the most romantic spots on earth, a small Maltese village, and stay at a magnificent Mediterranean villa by the coast. Their relationship is in tatters, she’s withdrawn and he drinks. Then they discover a peephole to the next suite, and they can watch a newly-married couple having sex. Will this heal their unexplained funk?

You want to love it but they won’t let you. She doesn’t speak, so we never find out why. He’s a writer who can’t write. Has there ever been a convincing movie about a writer. This one is not. 3/10.

However, I always love it when movies are 100% symmetrical, when climaxes occur on the dot, at the 30-minute and 60-minute points. Here too, the delineating point of the story happens exactly at 1 hour and 1 minute (out of a 2 hours and two minutes), when they start watching together the young couple next door fucking.  

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Enchanted April, another entry in the popular sub-genre of romantic travelogues to the Mediterranean areas of Italy, or the south of France. But the story of 4 different London women in the 1920′s who decide to rent an Italian villa on their own was not a feminist tale of emancipation and discovery, rather a boring class-based mush. My second mediocre film from Mike Newell (after the horrible ‘Love in the time of cholera’). 2/10.

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The Killers X 4:

🍿 The killers (1946), my first film noir by Robert Siodmak. With Burt Lancaster (in his film debut) waiting fatalistically for death in his room, and Ava Gardner in her breakthrough role. The lead gets murdered in the opening scene, and the story is then told all in flash-backs. Got me wanting to watch ‘Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid’ again.

🍿 Re-reading the Hemingway short story on which the movie was based on, it’s obvious that the only part of the plot from the original story are the first 15 minutes, which have the best dialogue in the whole movie.

🍿 Don Siegel’s harsh remake transferred the Noir menace into the sunny racetracks of Rialto, CA. The very short Hemingway notion about a guy laying on a bed in a room who doesn’t run away from death, was completely removed here, and instead turned into a gory and violent pulp. Terrific 1964 pop-vibes with professional hit-men Lee Marvin and partner as the clear inspirations to Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield.

But just seeing Evil Empire Ronald Reagan getting slapped is worth the price of admission.

🍿 There is also a 1956 Russian version of The killers, Andrei Tarkovsky very first short, directed when he was a student at a Moscow film school. He plays the second customer who comes to the bar.

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The Woman in the Window by Fritz Lang, another nightmarish film noir - actually the film that originated the term itself. A terrific suspense story about “respectable” professor Edward G. Robinson, who “strays” by accepting an offer for a drink with a woman not his wife, and MUST PAY FOR IT WITH HIS LIFE!

The trailer.

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Night Will Fall is a documentary about a documentary. It chronicles the making of ‘German Concentration Camps Factual Survey’, an official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, which was based on actual footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945. Alfred Hitchcock’s was brought in from Hollywood to complete the original which would make it his only documentary. However, due to changing politics after the liberation, the original film was abandoned uncompleted, shelved and forgotten for 70 years.

Both films contain harrowing footage of the most gruesome atrocities as they were first discovered in Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Majdanek and Dachau. 9/10. 

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Curiosity-Find!

The Poor Man of Nippur (2019) is the World’s First Film Made in Babylonian, the Language of Ancient Mesopotamia. It’s an adaptation of an old Akkadian story dating from around 1500 BC, found on an archeological site in Turkey. It tells the story of the three-fold revenge which the destitute Gimil-Ninurta wreaks on the local Mayor after the latter wrongs him. The film version of this ancient text is a creation of students from Trinity Collage and Cambridge Assyriology Department. The 20 minutes short is available on YouTube.

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2 with Gaby Hoffmann (Viva’s daughter!):

🍿  My second by Sebastián Silva (After the masterful ‘The Maid’), Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus. An off-beat drama about a self-absorbed Michael Cera who travels with 3 young Chilean friends to the desert, looking for an hallucinogenic plant, to trip on its mescaline-like properties. On the way, they pick up free-spirited Gaby Hoffmann whose new-age hippy-dippy sensibilities clash with the obnoxious Cera. Its rambling, shaky camera fits the sensitive growth story. 6/10.

In the background, Edward Sharpe‘s ‘Man on Fire’ is playing, so you know it’s good. 🍿 This is my life, Nora Ephron’s directorial debut. It’s about single mom Marge Simpson who becomes a comedian and her two daughters. This was 3 years after ‘Field of dreams’ so Hoffmann still looked and acted like Karin Kinsella. The movie itself was just not funny, or good.

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2.5 by Finnish director Jalmari Helander:

🍿 Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, which Cate Blanchett named “one of her favorite movies”. A surprising Christmas horror comedy about hunting mean and evil Santa Clauses and training them as mall Santas, so they can be exported all over the world for the holidays. The well-told fable is told from a boy point-of-view. [From here].

This is based on his old throwaway joke short, Rare Exports Inc. which I remember from 2005.

🍿 He followed this with a big action-adventure film, Big Game, where the plane of the President of the United States, Samuel L. Jackson, is being shot down over the same remote area in Finland, and the same boy actor (as well as his father) rescues him and saves his ass. Lame. 3/10.

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April's Daughters, my second by Mexican director Michel Franco’s unsettling Puerto Vallarta dramas. His existential ‘Sundown’, with his regular colleague Tim Roth, was emotionally mesmerizing, but so well-done. This one was an unpleasant roller-coaster, like a baby that won’t stop crying, which is a big part of this soundtrack. Here too there’s a protagonist who abandons their family without any explanation. A cruel mother and two young daughters who are left to fend for themselves. A Michael Haneke-style devastation.

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First watch: Grosse Pointe Blank. A romantic black comedy about a professional hit man, who’s cool as a Fonzie, or even as a Clarence Worley. Peak Minnie Driver, and Peak John Cusack, and with a score by Joe Strummer. So maybe I will watch True Romance once again (my most favorite Tarantino’s)?. 5/10.

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2 by Jessica McGoff:

🍿 My Mulholland, a creative video essay by the young Scottish intellectual about watching David Lynch's ‘Mulholland Drive’ when she was thirteen. (Via).

🍿 Her lovely short essay Balloons in Cinema (2021), Commissioned by BFI to support the release of the German movie ‘Balloon’. 

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A fascinating discussion between The Coen Brothers and their DP Barry Sonnenfeld, talking about how they shot and filmed their very first film, ‘Blood Simple’.  

Mentioned in the hour long talk is the fake trailer starring Bruce Campbell which they shot the year before, in order to raise the $1.5M for the movie.

Similar conversations on the ‘Cinematographers on cinematography’ YouTube channel.

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Re-watch: Crimes and Misdemeanors, a perfectly balanced Woody Allen movie. Multiple stories interlock brilliantly; existential guilt, subtle morals, blindness and murder. All the while he’s grooming his teenage niece, and tries to cheat on his wife. 9/10.

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Chris Rock: Tamborine, a 2018 stand-up special directed by Bo Burnham. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

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After reading some good things that the new Tetris origin story is better than what it could have be, I gave it a try. However I couldn’t stay on for more than 19-20 minutes: With a non-charismatic, bland main guy, and superficial and infantile direction, dusting up an old copy of the game would have been much better use of that time. 1/10.

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(My complete movie list is here)

[larkiethings]

I think a lot of it was just the contrast to my high school experience. I went to a small high school so I literally had 0 choice or 2 options when it came to classes. Like do I want to take pre-calculus in a dungeon with a teacher who stares down girls’ shirts and whose teaching style is “literally read from the textbook”? No. But there’s no other math option and I need to graduate. Do I want to take the history class with 30 kids or with 7 (because nobody wants to take us history so it inevitably gets added to whatever spot most people have open, resulting in unbalanced classes)? The biggest choice I got my entire high school career was whether I wanted to learn French or Spanish, or Band, Shop, Art or Ceramics for an elective (Shop got cut a couple years so that was also. Not always an option) by contrast college was really about what I wanted to do. Yeah we had some required classes, but it was like. You need a math related class. I took statistics so I can think better about polls and studies that I see in the news. You need a writing heavy class. I took history of Ancient Rome because that teacher made us write so much it counted. You need some core classes for your major, but they’re mostly intro classes and then every other requirement has 3 or 4 options you can fill it with. Did I want to write a 15 page research paper? No but the topic is open so my subject is lesbians which makes it way more appealing. Also I could make friends with lots of different people rather than being stuck in all the same classes as James who started bullying me at 8 years old and didn’t stop until graduation. It wasn’t always easy but it felt SO freeing.

[mygainyear2024]

Day 4 Off the beaten track and 22,579 steps to language school

After breakfast I headed to the gym to do my own (the exercise physio's) program which went pretty smoothly. It wasn't too crowded and I found what I needed. I still managed to miss a turn getting there!

After much fluffing around on the computer, I finally got out the door and headed to Alvor for lunch and my first Portugese lesson at Golfland (basically a putt putt). I posted a question about a month ago on a Facebook page enquiring about language classes and had one response, they put me in touch with Rebecca Cuddeford.

I thought I might walk based on the advice of the Canadian couple I met yesterday, although they indicated the coastal route was the one they took. Given my tardiness I decided to follow the maps.me instructions inland. I did notice the path seemed to go off road, but I went with it and saw a different side of the Algarve. It was quite warm today, around 20-21°, I felt the heat walking in the middle of the day. I was also feeling a tad adventurous, not knowing what might be around a corner, until I started listening to a podcast on the Women Who Travel, Condé Nast Traveler program. Alice Morrison walked across Morocco with three nomads and six camels over 7 months. I think she said she did 70,000kms!! Now that's adventure.

I booked lunch at Ria de Alvor at Wyndam Residences. I enjoyed my fresh herb crusted cod, sadly without wine. I just could not entertain the idea of a glass of Mateus and there was no other rosé by the glass. Later, one of the participants in the language school told me that she'd never eat there! Despite all my research prior to coming I had of course missed the main attractions in Alvor, the harbour and its restaurants, and some cute shops I saw on the way to the bus. This was also the case with Ferragudo yesterday, me in the industrial area, while apparently a different world awaits (realised after I did a review of my copious notes). Luckily I'm here for a while and can return.

I had thought about walking back along the coastal route into Praia da Rocha for gelato, but the language teacher advised against it on my own. The reason, the path is not always obvious and can crumble away! Falling off cliff tops before I actually retire is not something on my bucket list. I do have some women who responded to other Facebook posts I wrote (I sent messages to them today announcing my arrival) so I'll ask their advice and whether they'd like to join me. Otherwise Gary, who attended the class today, is a member of a walking group/s and knows everybody, according to the teacher! I had a lovely quick informative chat with Michelle and ?? about owning property in Portugal. They are still based in the UK, but holiday regularly in Portugal. They said they do pay tax in both countries, but there's some arrangement between Portugal and the UK.

It was a fast paced lesson. Rebecca moved to Portugal eight years ago and within four years started to teach. For €5 per hour payg there were about 15 of us. I was the only Australian and I think I heard all British and Irish accents, some sounded quite funny speaking Portugese. I think they were mostly retired, there was one guy who is an actor and he was switched on with it and sounded fabulous. It is an interesting language, there seems to be some German, French, Italian and maybe Spanish influences. Ricardo, the trainer at the gym last night, sounded like he was saying German words (maybe he was!). Anyway aside from Olá (Hi), obrigada (thank you), um galão (a frothy milky coffee), pastel de nata (Portugese tart), I can now practice Chamo-me Jody (my name is Jody), como estás (how are you?), muito benn (very good), quero uma cerveja (I'd like a beer!). We did practice what was taught last week and then moved on to months of the year and numbers.

I ended the outing with a triple scoop gelato (ricotta & café, pistacchio italiano and my preference, crosscantino & rum) from Gelateria Sorbetto, in Praia da Rocha, only a 12 minute walk from my apartment. It was excelente!

I'm pleased to announce the €2.99 (discounted from €5) bottle of rosé from Setúbal is drinkable. It went down well with my homemade (em casa) prawn fried rice, which was still edible with the notes of turps syrah splashed in as stock!

[whatsonmedia]

Finally, a GCSE for British Sign Language 

We Already Have GCSE's For Languages Like Spanish, French and German, Why Not BSL? It's January, we have said our goodbyes to 2023 and are now saying Hi to 2024. Apart from the Summer Olympics taking place in the beautiful French capital of Paris and Sweden hosting the Eurovision Song Contest for what feels like the umpteenth time even I don't know how it will shape up. Just hoping that it's not as barmy as 2023 has been.  What I am hopeful of though is to finally see British Sign Language, BSL for short, to begin being slowly implemented into the education curriculum. Now this is something that had been campaigning for, and for quite some time I might add. Now according to the latest reports it'll another year till we start seeing it actually being taught in schools. Basically we won't be having it until 2025, and even then it won't be until the Summer/Autumn. Now I openly admit that I don't have the first clue on how the mechanics of the educational system works. I myself have been through at least three different stages of the system itself; School (Primary and Secondary, and yes I count them as one been of the word School being used), College and University. Yes I did do Apprenticeships but that's a conversation for another day. When I was at school, Secondary, the only language class I did was German, and I openly admit I wasn't great at it. I didn't get on with all my German language teachers. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. There was French as well but I was never on the list to attend, for reasons I can guess but that's all they'll ever be.  English did appear on the board but only ever in the reading writing literature sense. There was the odd specialist classes which were more like electives that only lasted a few weeks but it's not like you'd suddenly become fluent after a month or two.  Looking back at the past couple of decades there was a small handful of languages being taught in schools; German, French, Spanish, Italian and Greek. The latter being useful if you ever planned on a career in Medicine.  From the moment I became aware of British Sign Language being an actual language I was always curious to know why it was never taught in schools. I first became aware of it when I was at Primary School and even then it looked both weird and intriguing. My reasons for this? For me, it was the first time in my entire life that I had seen a type of communication which wasn't verbal. It was spoken through hand gestures and movements rather than spoken orally. Can't remember the exact moment other than it was during those years and I was absolutely fascinated by it. During college there was a student who I got to know and we became really good friends and they had a Sign Language interpreter who stayed with them during the whole day. Me, even though I hung around them a lot and they had an interpreter with them I was too busy being intrigued by their communication. The whole 'three's a crowd' thing barely occurred to me, mainly because both myself and our peers would be asking how you pronounced words or phrases in Sign Language. There was the one about how to spell but that seemed a little time consuming at the time. However, I did learn how to say both my first name and nickname.  Apart from social gatherings the only other time I remember seeing it is in the 1994 film, The River Wild. So even though it won't be happening this year I am looking forward to seeing it become an official GCSE. At the end of the day, like German, Spanish, French and Italian, British Sign Language is an official law so why not teach it as a GCSE. From what i have seen over the past few years we have accepted that Sign Language is an official language, so why not? There will always be people who are deaf, either from birth, illness or injury. Now I'm only just saying this as a theory, there are people who probably use it, not because of hearing problems, but because of verbal communication issues and signing's just easier. Even though it's another year away I am of the opinion that it should be rolled out sooner, this year in fact.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-67772338.amp Read the full article

[ladybugs-and-black-cats]

Pardon My French!

So, I’m going to be perfectly honest here. For the longest time, I could not stand the French language! Allow me to explain real quick before you judge me for my old opinion. 😆

The Background

I was first exposed to the French language when I was a mere 14 years old. At the time, I was in 8th grade here in the US and my middle school had a “language survey” class. Four marking periods. Four languages. Yes, we took a different language each marking period. The class was designed to help us decide what language we wanted to sign up to take in high school.

I really enjoyed my first two marking periods (Spanish and German). For the third and fourth marking periods, I had French and Latin. I was even less a fan of Latin, but that’s a story for another day. My teachers for French and Latin were both long-term substitutes—which isn’t a problem—but they just didn’t make the classes as enjoyable as my Spanish and German teachers had in the two prior marking periods. The one thing I ended up liking about the class was that my crush at the time—Eric—was in the class…and even that was less pleasant when Eric started dating another girl.

It wasn’t just the teachers I didn’t particularly like. I just didn’t like the language itself. Why were there so many silent letters? How was I supposed to know how to even read this silly language? These questions and so many others hurt my poor little 14-year-old American brain. 😆 Sure the language sounded pretty and my mother had taken French as her selected language in school, but those just weren’t enough to make me like the language. Honestly, to this day, all I really remember easily is “Bonjour”, “Oui”, and how to count to three.

Present Day

So, to fast-forward a lot, I chose German in high school, took four years, visited Germany in my senior year. Good times. (In later years, I found myself wishing I’d chosen Spanish because that would really have paid off, but it is what it is and that’s also a story for another day!)

Over the years, though, I’ve found a love for language learning. I’ve found an appreciation from hearing other languages spoken and trying to pick up on some of the words and phrases as I listen to and read foreign languages. There are so many foreign language songs (Japanese, Spanish, and German) songs on my Spotify, which I listen to while driving. I especially love listening to Disney songs (from the animated movies) in other languages. Several years ago, I made a Duolingo account with plans to start using some of their courses. I’ve played around with it a little. It’s pretty fun. So, yeah, learning new languages is definitely one of my hobbies.

Miraculous New Love For French

During the pandemic, I was at home and bored (but who wasn’t?) because my first job—as a teacher—was shut down and I was only working my second job—at a grocery store—for a couple days a week for the first few months of the quarantine. That summer, when I had a lot of downtime, I decided to start watching a new show.

As I was looking through my streaming sites, I remembered that a friend a few years ago had recommended that I check out Miraculous. At the time, I’d thanked my friend for the recommendation, but knew that never in a million years would I actually follow through and watch it. Honestly, at that time, I was a huge fan of anime and manga. That was the niche I’d found. Back then, I just couldn’t see myself ever liking Miraculous because the plot seemed too “out there” and kiddish. Oh, if only “Past Me” had any idea…😆

Strangely enough, I got into Miraculous because I watched the English dub of Blue Exorcist. (You can probably already see the connection…) After hearing Bryce’s character (Rin Okumura), I looked to see his other credits, found Miraculous, and remembered that recommendation from a few years prior. The rest…well, it’s history and here I am now, devoting an entire blog to this silly show!

So Many Languages

In the years since I joined the fandom, I’ve come to love the premieres and how I’ve watched so many random dubs because I never feel like waiting for the English dub (having the English dub premiere the episode “Wishmaker” worldwide is something I will NEVER forget!).

Along with the English dub, I’ve also watched the Brazilian dub, the German dub, and—of course—the French dub. Watching the French dub has given me that new appreciation for the language. The voice actors do an amazing job and the language is nice to listen to because it really does sound pretty! I don’t mind French when I’m not being graded on how to spell it, read it, write it, or speak it!

In Closing

Someday in the near future, I’d love to add French to my Duolingo and learn the language at my own pace. I have to say Merci to Miraculous for sparking this interest and helping me to find a love for the French language! 🇫🇷

[herbstseurope2023]

(From Ellory) Yesterday consisted of traveling on a train for several hours before we arrived in Nimes, France. When we arrived at Nimes we dropped our backpacks off at a hotel and then we began to look for food because Marin claimed that her stomach was eating itself. We walked around looking for food until we found this place I don’t remember what is was called though. Anyway the food was delicious but it was also a large amount of food for one person to eat. We also got slushies which were tasty.

Dr. Herbst wanted to go see an old arena where gladiator fights were held and he wanted to see the temple of Augustus I don’t remember what it was called. We saw those two things after lunch and they were very cool. At lunch there was a white pigeon missing some toes, I have seen a lot of pigeons with missing toes. There were also these small green birds in Barcelona that you could feed seeds and if you held the seeds they would land on you. That’s the animal I see the most, no bunnies or squirrels like in the US.

Yesterday on the train there were several people who had been in the wrong seats. The second time that a couple had sat in the wrong seats the new couple talked in French at first. I understood what numbers they were saying and it turned out they were from Scotland. They had cool accents, but I think the spanish accents in Barcelona are cooler than British accents. Although they all kind of sound the same with the spanish accent. They all sound like my old teachers from Spain.

Last night we made it to Avignon, it was raining when we first arrived. I don’t think I could live here, there are so many small streets everywhere, it would be hard to not get lost. At night we went to dinner at a burger place. It was small and there was only one girl working there. She was friendly and she said she only spoke a little Spanish so we talked to her in English. The food was good and it was fast considering there was only one person working. I think she deserves a raise. We left and mom found a good gelato place they had around 74 different flavors. They spoke some English which made it easier to order. We left and ran into this dude who was from Israel and asked if we where American and where we were from. He seemed to know New York but he spoke French but I could understand him. That’s pretty much it or at least the majority of the cool things we saw or did.

[fangirlies]

I'm so happy that you decided to stay with us here! This part of fandom wouldn't be as comforting and welcoming without you (considering that we've already lost so many people😟). It's so cool that you gave it a chance! I and all your fangirlies have your back, we're here for you and we're ready to help💜 Thank you for your input! And I definitely feel a bit special now teehee😎 It for sure was a divine timing.

Your Xavier is really the best! I see him the same way, so it's a win for me hehehe What a guy!

Bruh... unfortunately grasshoppers are a big thing in my city😰 I always dread summer, because these mf are everywhere, hopping around like they own this place. I hate them with burning passion. I enjoy nature and would love to maybe go run around fields in countryside whenever I'm there, but these bitches don't let me live my anne with an e life😡

Oh, I wish I spoke freely a lot of languages, but I'm lazy. I studied French at school, but all I can do us probably read without mistakes. French was my first love and I wanted to know it so fucking bad, I was obsessed. But the teacher at my school ruined it for me and made me kinda detest it for a couple of years - and it makes me sad. I love it now and want to start learning it again. Just mad that some teachers can ruin even the subject that you love :( I know a bit German because of college, but I'm really not good at it. I can read some slavic languages, but definitely not speak them. It's just nice, when sometimes I go on Twitter for god knows what reason, and see a plethora of different languages on my timeline and can read them and even understand! However, again, I wish I was more diligent to actually learn how to speak those languages.

What are you studying? Stats sound like something scary and mathematician for my humanitarian brain lmao

Xavi acting annoyed when he is actually a big softie and simp for his partner > > > >

- elliot anon

Im so happy I stayed too, I would’ve never got to experience so much love and warmth from fangirlies.

Bestie I’m crying. Grasshoppers everywhere sounds like hell foreal. I enjoy being in nature too & don’t mind bugs as long as they don’t mess with me 😭 like in Australia? I don’t think I’ll last a second with the spiders there. I’m crying at “they don’t let me live my anne with an e life” LMAO you’re too funny bestie.

“Lazy” and continues to list languages you’ve picked up throughout your life. So French, some German,some Slavic languages, and English? The most I can do is English and Spanish.. but that’s honestly so impressive! Maybe one of the things you can be productive with is get into French again?? You said you enjoyed it if it wasn’t your teacher. Which by the way I’m sorry you had to go through. The biggest reason I’m majoring in education is because there’s very few teachers who take on the big responsibility and ACTUALLY love what they do. There’s some subjects you might not be great at but then you could tell the teacher loves it & that alone makes you enjoy learning. And knowledge is the most beautiful thing!

As I said up there ^ I’m an education major! Want to have my own classroom and set of students so bad. I knew it since I was little that I wanted to potentially be a role model for children. I only need stats because I’m going the psychology route instead of actual education just so I can have a variety of options in the future. But I’m glad I’m going that route because learning about the brain and about how people work is honestly mind blowing. I always say that class is free therapy😅

[motsimages]

I have studied French and Russian abroad, and I had similar levels when I went on those two separate exchange programs.

For French, it was an erasmus. I was very young and it was my first time abroad. I had studied French in high school and another year of uni (in a full bilingual study). I remember vividly that I turned around the bus station (I went there by bus!) three times because I didn't fully understand what people very helpful explained to me about how to get to the bus I needed outside of it.

The first week for sure, I moved around in vibes, having to ask everything several times to more or less get a general idea. I also remember that the first day I decided to befriend my neighbour because I was hearing her and her friends next door and couldn't sleep. She was very kind and spoke slowly for me but her friends were high and spoke their usual normal French. It involved a southern accent I wasn't used to. I couldn't understand anything at all. One of my last days there, I went to say goodbye, the same situation repeated itself but this time I fully followed the conversation. Better than any standardised test.

I learnt how to write dissertations the French way (we had some classes for erasmus that taught us what teachers expected from us in essays and things like that). This, in turn, helped me better write in Spanish even if each language has its ways. For years after that, I sometimes would write something in French first and then redo it in Spanish because French helped me organise my ideas. I had and maybe still have better professional writing in French than in Spanish.

Overall, the university and the university residence helped a lot. There were social workers who helped us apply for certain things, and teachers were overall very helpful. I do remember though that someone told us that it was almost impossible to get a 20 (the highest grade) in any subject, 18 was already as good as anyone could get. We had a subject in Spanish. It was Spanish for the French students but it was part of a 4-subject pack and we needed the translation subject (so 2 of them), so we had to pass that exam as well. Obviously we didn't prepare it. Only one of the native Spanish speakers got a 19, the rest of us was at 17 or so. It was matching words and definitions and some words we hadn't even seen, they were rare.

Bureaucracy was more nightmarish when I went to France for work but student life was quite easy to manage, even with a low level of French (mine wasn't very low, I just had a lot of passive knowledge and no real experience with colloquial French).

For Russia, I had less knowledge. I had studied 3 years of almost bilingual education too (the studies of translation in Spain and my faculty were like that, very intense), but it took 3 months or so to really be able to communicate easily. However, this University where I went had students who volunteered to accompany us in our paperwork the first month or so, so it was easier. But I remember very clearly the first day because everything was different and I didn't understand a word.

Classes in Russia were overall very small, in some of them there was just 5 of us. The first couple of weeks we spent them going to different classes in different faculties to see which were more fitting to our studies in Spain. We also had a program to prepare for the B1 or B2 level. I didn't understand what was I signing up for the first day, so I was put in B1 but I feel with little effort i could have passed the B2 in the end. The classes we had for Russian for foreigners were excellent. Many of the pedagogical foreign language teaching things I learned come from this. We were taught grammar, culture, idioms... in a very deep and accessible way.

The most difficult part I think is letting aside your own language and culture, even if for short periods of time (like classes or paperwork). That is your reference frame and, particularly for paperwork, it can be so different and difficult that you can only be frustrated because it doesn't fit your previous knowledge.

I would LOVE to hear from anyone who went through university studies in a language that isn't their native one! Share your experiences! How did you manage ? What was the most difficult part ? What language learning level were you at before you started the course ? I am so curious about all of the details !!

[seat-safety-switch]

Couple of years ago, I worked in a chicken restaurant. It wasn’t a fast-food restaurant, more like a family eatery. Not very classy, though. Sure, they had the normal accoutrements, and the tables looked like they were made out of actual wood. People brought their kids there, and then they ate some chicken. Peaceful. Normal. And then it happened.

When you work in a food-service environment, even the most professional and upstanding ones, there is a hierarchy. France figured this out first, by using a bunch of soldiers to tell everyone to make croissants at gunpoint. The head chef is God, and if he or she so demands it, you will walk into Hell Itself, find a little stool, and start peeling an entire sack of potatoes there. Maybe you’ll cry in the walk-in freezer a little bit. I digress.

I only lasted at that job for like one week, because I didn’t know the difference between “sour cream” and “creme fraiche.” This is mostly because my high-school French teacher was an alcoholic who listened to books-on-tape in order to learn French herself, and accidentally bought a Spanish tape one month before the final exam. As you can imagine, that became a problem when labouring under the French battalion system in the kitchen. Disgraced, I was ejected into the cold, Anglo world outside.

In order to prepare for my next job, I went to the grocery store and started reading every cereal box I could find. Soon, I was hooked. Pictures of Mustangs left my bedroom wall, and in their place went indecipherable drawings of Citroens, whose drivers were cartoonish waifs, waving cigarette holders together. Things got so bad that my parents called for an intervention, which at the time consisted of hiring a priest to pretend to perform an exorcism and ask for five hundred bucks on the backend. I awoke a couple days later, my pants around my ankles, having vomited out most of the contents of my stomach (Pillsbury instant croissants, Orangina, the keys to a Renault 8 Gordini which I did not own.)

Now, I tour high schools, telling other kids to stay away from the restaurant industry, and more importantly, French shit in general. Stick with the things we know and love, I implore them: Japanese cars, ideally not ones made by Nissan. If it’s got lots of revs, that’s what you need to buy.

[sagaduwyrm]

My Jason Todd Language Headcanons:

I love the idea of Jason knowing a bunch of languages, especially because I headcanon him as mixed ethnicity (I consider Gotham to be a high immigrant city like New York and that's especially visible in the poorer areas Jason grew up in), so here we go.

Jason is primarily Hispanic/Caucasian/Thai, with a couple other things thrown in that he's never bothered to figure out. The Thai is on Sheila's side of the family, so he never interacted much with that part of his heritage, but he grew up speaking as much Spanish as English with the Todd's.

Jason's usual babysitter when he was growing up was an old Russian woman who lived in the same apartment building. He picked up the language from her, as well as some early cooking skills.

When Jason was adopted by Bruce he picked up Yiddish around the house(Let Bruce by Jewish DC!), Learned French at school, and learned Greek because Diana taught him some and he was so starstruck that he immediately threw himself into learning the rest of the language.

This is when he found out that knowing more languages allowed him to read literature in those languages, which had a strong effect on his desire to learn.

During this time he also learned a lot of language tricks from Dick. I headcanon the circus Dick grew up in as having a lot of people from different ethnicities, so Dick not only learned several of them but also got a grasp of the phonetics of even more. He helped Jason figure out how to learn to pronounce new languages. It was a good moment of bonding for them.

During his time with the League of Assassin's he learned several more, both because he needed to understand his teachers and because they wanted to make sure he could work anywhere in the world, mainly: Arabic, the League dialect of Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Mandarin, and Portuguese.

I think that Dick actually can communicate in more languages and dialects, but Jason is better at figuring out stuff like slang or manners. Regardless, their definitely the best at languages in the family.

[volturiwolf]

Good Girls Are Bad Girls That Haven't Been Caught - A Quil Ateara x fem!Reader Imagine

That's a small story for Quil who is always overlooked, but we stan all of the wolfpack here (almost)

Based on the song "Good Girls" (previously known as "Good Girls are Bad Girls that haven't been caught") by 5SOS

She's a good girl, she's daddy's favorite

He's saved for Harvard (he knows she'll make it)

She's good at school, she's never truant

She can speak French (I think she's fluent)

Quil’s POV

(Y/N) was the perfect girl. Beautiful, confident, ambitious, probably the best student you could ever come across. She was quiet; she never got into trouble; she was always participating in extracurricular activities, and she always volunteered for every project that was happening around the school, La Push, and Forks.

She was known for being a goody-two-shoes, never going against authorities, never objecting to the teachers. She always arrived 20 minutes before the first bell, just to check her books once again, having small talks with the teachers who all seemed to adore her. She was the easiest person to get around with, always willing to help everyone, whether that was homework, advice, or money.

She was the pride of her family, the golden kid, their future. Her parents were always praising her, and always bragging to others about their daughter’s achievements. Her father wanted her to attend Harvard, being one of the prestigious colleges in the country. (Y/N) could definitely attend Harvard, having achieved perfect scores, and with a rich background in athletics, volunteering, and languages.

Apart from English, (Y/N) could speak German, Italian, Spanish, and Greek, but her favorite language was French, which she spoke fluently. She had an affinity for learning new languages and learning about different cultures. In my eyes, she was the perfect girl for me.

But that meant I could not get close to her. I could only look at her from afar. I was a good student too - probably one of the best around, but (Y/N) was the best among everyone. I had my circles and friendships, but not (Y/N)’s friends or personality. For her being the best student around, she was also extremely sociable and friendly. (Y/N) was a good girl.

Something which shocked me beyond comprehension was when she started hanging out with one of the worst guys around. Damian was probably the worst guy I had ever seen. He was a bully, a gang member, the worst guy you could ever meet. Yet, (Y/N) saw the best in him. She was always hanging around him, laughing and having genuine fun with him. She would tease him all the time, and he would go crazy for her, licking his lips and all. 

I was disgusted; (Y/N) deserved someone better, someone sweet and caring to treat her like the queen she was, not someone who she should have avoided all along. And she wouldn’t see that she didn’t need Damian in her life. They weren’t really a couple, but there was definitely something going on between them, though (Y/N) would always remain the sweet, pure girl she had always been. I just wanted him to leave her alone; he wasn’t a good influence to have around, and I was worried about (Y/N) following his ways. 

'Cause every night, she studies hard in her room

At least that's what her parents assume

But she sneaks out the window to meet with her boyfriend

Here's what she told me, the time that I caught her

She said to me, "Forget what you thought

'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught

So just turn around and forget what you saw

'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught"

(Y/N) lived a couple of hundred feet away from my own house. (Y/N) would never go out at night; she would never go out on the weekends. She would always spend her nights studying in her room, until late at the night. She would start early in the afternoon, have dinner in between, and then study until 1 or 2 am. (Y/N) was only focused on school, and she was aiming high.

Her parents were worried about her, sleeping late and waking up early, but she would always convince them that she was doing fine and that she had to make a few sacrifices if she wanted to get into a good college. Her parents were satisfied with her attitude, believing their daughter was a good girl who only focused on school. But, that’s what they thought. Because I knew that wasn’t true at all.

I was out late one night, patrolling around the area. I was really tempted to see how (Y/N) was doing. I imagined her focused on her books, studying under her desk lamp, writing and studying her notes, and solving complicated math problems. I couldn’t help myself, so I decided to go by her house, and look at her from afar.

Before I could even come close enough to see her through her window, I heard a small window open, and a few rattles. I hid behind a bush and looked closer, to find out it was (Y/N), leaving the house through her bedroom window. She was all dressed up, makeup on, with a few bracelets and an intoxicating perfume emitting from her body.

She turned around to look at me and then smiled and winked. Everything around me narrowed around her as if she was in the center of my new galaxy. I could not see anything but her; she was the only thing that mattered to me at that moment. It took me a few moments to realize I had imprinted on her.

When I came back from my vision, (Y/) was standing right in front of me, looking at me with worry and curiosity. “Quil? Are you okay? You zoned out for a few minutes and I got worried.” 

“You… You know my name?” 

She chuckled. “Of course I do, Quil. Now tell me, what are you doing here?”

“I…” I had to think about something quickly. “I was out walking. I have terrible insomnia, and walking really helps me sleep at night. Then I heard a small commotion around your house and I thought someone was trying to break in. I got scared, so I hid behind the bush.”

“Oh, okay. Don’t worry. It was just me.” She quickly took her phone out of her purse and looked at the time. “Oh, I have to go now, or I’ll be running late.”

“Wait! It is quite late. Where are you going?” I sounded, and probably also looked, worried.

“I’m going out with my boyfriend. He’s waiting for me at his house, and then we’ll go out. I don’t know where yet.” She smiled.

I was shocked. “Wait. What? Why are you going out? I thought you would be studying at this time. I… I... I don’t know what to say.” I was clueless and lost. “I thought you were supposed to be a “good girl”, you know?”

She took my hand in hers, and I could swear I felt my heart flying away. “Quil, don’t believe anything you hear. I think you should forget what you thought, ‘cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught. I think I may be one of these girls; being a goody-two-shoes to everyone’s eyes, but a rebel at heart. Please, do me a favor, just turn around and forget what you saw, and maybe, just maybe we could hang out a few times. You seem like a cool guy.” She smiled again and kissed my cheek lightly before walking away.

I could only stand still and watch her mesmerized, as she walked away to meet her lover, who, sadly, wasn’t me. 

She's a good girl, a straight A-student

She's really into all that self-improvement

(I swear she lives in that library)

But if you ask her, she'll say, "That's where you'll find me"

But if you look then you won't find her there

She may be clever, but she just acts too square

'Cause in the back of the room where nobody looks (nobody looks)

She'll be with her boyfriend (she's not reading books)

Another day, another A for (Y/N). Just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. All the teachers called her a role model for everyone else, but she insisted that grades do not matter as much as character and personality do. She certainly had both in surplus, but maybe that was just the imprinting talking.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. (Y/N) was too good for me, she was too good for everyone, and, especially, too good for Damian. Yet, she somehow could not spend a moment without him. She was with him on our lunch break, sitting on his lap and cuddling; she was with him during our study break, at the back of the library where nobody could see them, making out and cuddling.

I was so jealous of Damian for being with (Y/N) all the time; for being able to cuddle, touch, and kiss her. I wanted to be with her; to be able to do all these things with her; to show her a world she would have never imagined. I didn’t want to force her into this world, so I decided I wouldn’t tell her anything unless I had to.

The pack was always nagging and pushing me to tell her, but I wouldn’t do it. It had to be with her own conscience and her own will. If she ever felt the same way I feel for her, then she would come to me. I could only wait, hoping that she would see and would come to me. 

She said to me, "Forget what you thought

'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught

So just turn around and forget what you saw

'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught

Day after day, it became harder to stay away from (Y/N). We would occasionally spend time together at school or be partnered up in projects together, but it wasn’t enough for me. It didn’t feel right to stay away from her, even if I couldn’t get close to her. She was with someone else, and, as long as she was happy, I was happy with her.

And days would go by like this: me wishing (Y/N) was mine, and (Y/N) being with someone else. Though, lately, she seemed sadder and lonelier than before, and I was wondering if Damian did anything to upset her, as she did not spend as much time with him as she did before, at least in front of others. 

I was really curious to know, so when we partnered up one day for a Physics project, I gained enough courage to ask her. “Hey, (Y/N), don’t misunderstand me, but has anything happened between you and Damian? You don’t seem fine lately. Has he done anything to you?

“Quil, I...” Her mouth trembled, and her eyes started watering.

“Hey, hey! You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t feel like saying anything. I’m really sorry for asking.” I tried to sympathize with her, caressing her hand.

“It’s not that. I do want to talk with you. It’s just… Lately, I’ve been feeling some way about someone else, and I couldn’t keep on doing this with Damian anymore. He looks like a scary guy but he’s a good person deep down. I couldn’t stay with him when I was only thinking about a different guy. It wouldn’t be fair to him, or me.”

My heart sunk. Her mind was already in someone else. “Oh, yeah. That was nice of you. So, how are you feeling after the break-up? Are you okay? Do you need some time? We can stop now with the project and you can go home if you’d like that.”

“No, no. I like it here. I like taking my mind off of everything by focusing on homework. I like spending time with you.” She smiled shyly. (Y/N) was never shy. 

Something sparked in me, an unfound confidence, and I leaned in to kiss her on the lips. I thought she would pull away, but after a small shock, she kissed me back harder than I did, and caressed my cheek with her hand. After a few minutes, we pulled away to breathe.

“Just in case you haven’t realized it yet, you are the guy I’ve been constantly thinking about.” She leaned in to kiss me once again, and all I could think about was…

Good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught

[necromancy-enthusiast]

I downloaded it and got into the mines in Zone 1, it's not so bad yet at least. I imagine things will get more complicated once I get to the characters that have less conventional ways of speaking, that always throws in an extra monkey wrench in translation. I do have to look up quite a bit but like I said, it's a lot easier and faster than looking up Chinese characters, because with the characters I have to open up my Pleco app, draw the character, and then pick the right one from the list I'm given. Usually it's pretty good at picking up which one you were going for but you still may have to try two or three times. But with French I can just type stuff in like with English, I don't even need to download another keyboard program on my phone or computer like I do with Chinese.

I mean I really shouldn't even complain, Pleco is great, and the way you had to look characters you didn't know up before stuff like that came out was in a physical dictionary. Traditional Chinese dictionaries are... Interesting, since Chinese doesn't have an alphabet, it has to sort characters in a different manner. The most common one is sorting by the number of strokes a character is written with, each 'stroke' being the mark you make when you put your writing instrument down and pick it up to write the next part of the character. So as you can imagine, looking things up in a traditional physical dictionary is extremely tedious, especially if you don't know your strokes (but thankfully my professors were pretty fastidious about hammering that into our heads, so I do).

Man I'm not gonna lie, this is bumming me out a bit, like I just taught myself a bit of French based on a whim, like first with Duolingo and then with a textbook and some other stuff online, and it's so much easier to advance than with Chinese, which I learned with some great teachers for two years in college and then when I studied abroad for a bit, and now I have plenty of resources to continue to teach myself with. It's just a proven fact, the more a language is like the one you speak natively the faster you'll progress, and sure French and English may be from different families, but they've influenced each other quite a bit, and English has also been heavily influenced a lot by Latin, which French descends from. Plus I also have some Spanish I learned in high school and from the area I live in, so even though French is notorious for being pretty different from it's nearby family languages, it helps a good bit.

Chinese and English are extremely different and have a very short history together, so it takes longer because there's so much more to learn, and you're retraining your brain to an even larger degree. Usually I'm good at not letting this bother me or slow me down, but right now it's making me kind of sad because I like Chinese a lot more than French. My academic interests (like potentially going to grad school and stuff like that) largely involve Chinese but French is just... You know, a side thing. I just thought it would be useful since there was some history and literature in French I was interested in. And yet despite that much more casual relationship, it's a lot faster and easier to progress. Oh well.

Anyway, I think I'll try and find some videos of the 2.0 and 3.0 Off English translations to compare. This post has already gotten pretty long so I'll make a new one, but I might add a couple of short things to this one later too.

Apparently in the track Silencio from the game Off, the track where you're choosing which world to go to that's mostly just creepy whispering, the whispering is about the apocalypse spoken in French. I tried listening to it a couple of times and basically all I can gather is 'yeah I can kinda pick up on a few individual voices here and there and they sound like they're speaking French but I have no clue what they're saying'. But apparently it's really hard to pick out much of anything even for people who natively speak French, which I'm sure was the intention to begin with. I should download the original French version of Off, my French is still very basic but looking words up in French is much easier and faster than looking up stuff in Chinese so I think I won't get frustrated as quickly, and I know there's a lot of contention about the differences between the 2.0 and 3.0 translations. This track, by the way:

[incandescent-sideblog]

{more redacted asmr HCs for your consideration- high school shaw pack + listeners edition}

I literally started this in ap bio earlier and I’m supposed to be doing a lab report for class right now but I’m too excited about David’s video so have these. I’m realizing that a lot of these are oddly specific??? not even specific in a way where I’m projecting (except for baabe, oops), just super weirdly specific in general. 

in high school, david, asher, milo and amanda (I HC these four as the same age and therefore in the same grade in school) were that group of friends that everyone knows but knows nothing about

not in a super mysterious twilight/cullen family way, just in an “oh they all seem super close and like a fun group” kind of way, yk?

like, they had their own friends kind of separate from their little group but everyone knew that they were THAT group

sometimes they tried to get darlin’ to join them but it was hard cause they had a different lunch period than the group and they were in a different grade than them

and whenever they did manage to convince darlin’ to go out with them, it was painfully awkward because most of the conversations revolved around inside jokes or old memories and no one really realized how out of place they felt (except maybe asher, but he didn’t really know how to help it back then, not like he would now at least, and david. but he didn’t know how to touch the subject with them so he didn’t.)

moving on, I think that milo was really good at english and any of the sciences in high school and was part of some sort of literature/writing club. he’s really good at poetry

asher was seriously good in philosophy, art and gym (idk why I get those vibes from him). he was definitely an all around good student, he just had his favourites. I feel like he played a sport of some type but I’m not sure which one just yet. maybe volleyball? or track, I feel like he’s fast.

david never missed one of his games/meets, milo and amanda tried to go to as many as they could

david was good at math, calculus, and physics. he helped asher, milo and amanda with the concepts they didn’t really understand (and probably did it better than the teacher). 

wasn’t on a sports team but he DID get asked to join the robotics club because of his math and physics marks. he declined and opted for gardening club instead (this one is absolutely based on that one audio where he planted flowers and trees in the backyard)

darlin’ was really good with languages in high school and they really excelled in french

 they weren’t really into clubs but sometimes after school they would stop by the library on the second floor and help the librarian with sorting out books

now onto the mates :)

because I apparently love projecting onto them specifically, baabe thrived on academic validation their entire academic career, but by their final year of high school, they were so tired and burnt out that their grades started slipping and their whole perception of themselves changed. they totally had/still struggle with imposter syndrome in a few different areas of their life

on a lighter note, they loved languages (french, spanish, german, any other languages schools in the states offer that I didn’t name bc mine only offers french and italian- you choose! I just think they could pick up on whichever one they chose super easily. however as a canadian, I’m biased towards them being best at french)

they were in ap english and biology

played clarinet in band class and was really good at it (concert band, not marching)

definitely tried their hand at a lot of clubs but really only stuck with extracurriculars outside of school

angel!! they played a couple sports, mostly track and cross country- I feel like they can run really fast (them and asher totally have races now and it scares david and baabe when they randomly start sprinting)

they were really good in chemistry, they got recommended for the ap level class. they were also good in their law/justice class

didn’t really have a solid friend group in high school, they kind of just had a few good friends in different groups of their own. their best friend moved away the summer before high school, so their friday nights were spent video chatting and calling (but I imagine their friend moved back/nearby for university so they never lost touch or anything :))

sweetheart loved music class in high school. absolutely loved it. they played flute but they picked up some tips from their band teacher by listening to her instruct other sections, so now they can adequately play trumpet and saxophone as well (they are an extremely fast learner)

didn’t do sports, but they did gym all four years of high school (I had to look up whether or not gym was mandatory all four years in the U.S. and apparently in California it’s mandatory for two years??)

they had a small circle of friends who they’re still friends with now and have been friends with since kindergarten

went through the empowered school system all throughout their school years, so they definitely took the empowered equivalent of a law/justice class to prepare for department training

baabe and angel actually went to the same high school but since there were so many people in their grade and they had different classes, their paths never crossed. they only figure out they went to the same high school when they’re hanging out with david, asher, milo and sweetheart

angel is telling a story about some geography teacher and baabe gasps and asks for his name. they freak out over the fact they both had him in grade 9 even though angel was in his period 2 class and baabe was in his period 1

this got wayyy longer than expected but I hope you enjoyed!!