Been A While

French class is going well I think. We've had no tests yet but the class is entirely in French now and I'm expected to follow along. I missed 3 of the first 4 classes and when I returned it was difficult for me to follow but now we're another 4 classes in and I can follow along fairly well. I often will hear the words now but not catch the meaning of them. Either I'll miss one key word or not know a verb but often it's also that the string of words means something other than what I would expect them to mean. For example 'mal au coeur', translated it means sick heart or ill heart, something along those lines. So what would you expect that to mean? Maybe broken hearted or something right? Nope, it means you want to throw up from eating too much sugar or something. Why not say 'mal au estomac'? Dunno, it's just one of those language things. When you're learning a new language you have no idea when these idioms are coming. Or there are some verbs that can be used it a lot of different ways like 'mettre' to put as I learned it but means a hell of a lot more than that. If you google translate mettre you'll find 19 dictionary results.

Now we're debating putting me in an intensive conversation French course for 2 weeks. Since I have no job and finding one is proving difficult in this french climate I may have to ramp up my language learning. I can write it fairly effectively as this point if I'm not expected to win awards for my prose but speaking it and hearing it are different matters. This intensive conversation course may be the spring board I need to be able to communicate in French consistently.

I've decided to try my hand at film making for a living. I've been on sets in the past and I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the job itself. I did grip and electric work a couple years ago but now I want to get into something a little more challenging so I've decided to get into camera work and video editing. Of course while I learn those trades I hope to gain employment working as a grip or coffee boy or something. The film industry is pretty good at encouraging new comers, film makers will often take on volunteers and help you learn the craft.

We bought a new camera, one that they film the show Trauma with. I'm going to make a portfolio with it while I volunteer my time and hopefully work part time. I've also got to wait 5 more months until I'm allowed to join the editors union, you have to live in Quebec for 18 months. It seems though that once I'm in the union jobs will be pretty easy to find. Let's hope anyway.

I'll probably post anything I make on a blog but it may take a while. I've got to film whatever I want to make then learn the editing software and do the edits. Intensive French will slow that down too although I intend to bring the camera and film the city on lunch breaks which of course are stupidly an hour. What the hell can I accomplish in one hour, I need to eat that's 15 min unless I make it longer. I can't skip eating either. So maybe I can rush a visit to the gym in but not if I want to do any cardio. Why not make the lunch a half hour and let us out a bit earlier. Every time I take all day classes it's the same thing. The teacher will often suggest we come back from lunch early and quit early, they want to get the hell out too, but you know there's always some asshole who wants the full hour.

I scored my first touchdown in football. It was my third game, we're 1-2 after two one point losses. I've caught a ball in each game for a total of 36 yards, my touchdown catch was a 5 yard square in route on the goal line. I'm very glad I didn't drift out of the endzone as I had to do a bit of a dive to catch it. It's a lot of fun the football. It kinda sucks that we have late games on Saturday night, 11pm for example, but everyday is like a Saturday to me these days.

Also Assassin's Creed 2 is awesome.