I Hate French Tonight

Good heavens, what's the point of learning another language? It's really tiring to listen to other people speak it and it's really tiring for other people to try to understand me speak it.

Tonight, Dyvia cooked Indian food and invited two of the neighbors to come eat with us. Dyvia is studying French but won't speak it generally, so a lot of the conversation was in English (in addition to French and German). We sat around and talked for a long time after dinner, this almost entirely in English. I love having a native language. It feels good to be able to use all the words I want to use and to be able to say what I want to say. Dyvia talked about the caste system in India (lower castes and "Other Backward Castes" currently receive monitary and other benefits from the government--affirmative action) and the discussion turned to religious beliefs.

We ended up going around the table, and each person told their view of who God is or if there is a God--their view on the force greater than ourselves. Dyvia said within the last couple of years she started believing there was a God when she started praying for little things and they would happen. Madame La Voisine said she believed there was something greather than us, though she didn't believe there was a God. I told how I believe there is a God, and he has a body, and he created us, and we are here to learn and to become better. Monica said she didn't believe there was a God, but believed in the Buddhist idea of eventually being able to thing of the world and other people not in terms of yourself and others, but in terms of everything being part of one universe--so no us and them, no you and me, just one (I liked this--and I've certainly been taught that we are all equal). Emmanuel said there is definately a higher force, but it doesn't matter what you call it--Jehova, or God, or Shiva.

The pictures: Geneva street art, The University of Geneva, and Lake Neuchatel. I went and talked to a councilor at the University of Geneva today about a master's program, and then Monica and I went to a really long meeting (the word in French for "meeting" in this case being "séance," which I found somewhat ironic) in Neuchatel about how the different cantons are implementing the European Language Portfolio. On the train back I tried to interview a teacher who uses the ELP. It was all a lot of French. Getting to use English tonight made me feel better.