Dec.11: Big Day!

Today was a big day for me! No, I did not run, or even exercise for that matter. I woke up early, caught a plane to Pau, worked all day, then caught a plane back to Paris. The good thing about both of these plane rides is that it allowed me to, finally, finish a little project I started about 3 weeks ago. My goal was to read George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' before meeting my family for Christmas. I have been reading nearly every spare moment during the day (on the metro, after dinner, during breakfast, and even smuggled it once into the bathroom at work...I know, even I am disgusted by that) in order to accomplish this task.

Now, for those of you who know this book you must be thinking that I am illiterate right now as the book itself is quite small and could be read in one intense session (or just a few trips to the bathroom). You are probably wondering how I could possibly have the ability to blog if it took me that long to read the book. The reason being is that the book is bilingual - the odd number pages are written in French and their translations are on the opposite, or even numbered, pages. So I read the French, trying to figure it out, then I read the english. I did this line by line for the entire book!

The cool thing about this whole exercise is that it has helped rekindle the enjoyment I used to always have for reading. Plus I think I may have learned a new french word or two! I tried reading French books before but I spent so much time looking up words and it was inconvenient to carry 3 books around with me at all times - the book itself, a dictionary, and a beschrelle (or verb conjucator book). I scanned a random page so you can see what it looks like.



The other cool thing is that the story is excellent - so it helps that I am interested, or I am sure that it would just feel like another boring french class ('cause we all know that conjucating verbs is so very sweet). As I was focusing more on the language aspect of the book, and not so much on the fact that it is a clever allegory of Stalinism, I would like to re-read again sometime and brush up on some of my Grade 11 social studies so I can focus more on those aspects.

No running yesterday (but 1 hour of pilates) or today (because I was trying put a baguette on the table), but will be back at it tomorrow night!

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