I did some typing today at the internship. Typing, and lots of squinting at French handwriting. Handwriting seems to be more important to people here: getting the contract for my internship ready to be faxed to the university, the director yelled for someone with good handwriting to do a cover page. Guillène the secretary wrote it, with lots of flourishes. Handwriting, then, but also writing by hand. I guess I was a little surprised when there wasn't a computer at every desk here, and lots of things seem to get written up by hand before they are typed--like the "bilan" I typed up today.
I'm not quite sure what a "bilan" is. Maybe a summary. Or a survey. Walking around today, I saw an ad for a free "bilan" of you body (trying to sell some weight loss product). Another kind of mysterious word here is "stage." I am on a stage--an internship--but francophones seem to be on stages all the time. The word seems to apply to internships, but also to in-service training, to conferences, to workshops, to traffic school--so when I tell someone I'm here for a stage (thinking I'm saying "internship") it really isn't that specific at all. They all ask, what kind of stage? Trying to figure out what exactly "stage" meant, I actually thought, "it's like a whole different language!" Well.... I guess it isn't just a language, but a culture you have to translate. Soon after I arrived in Switzerland, someone asked me how you said "bon appétit" in English. Someone with me said you didn't really say it in English, but I said, no, you say "bon appétit." But the other person was right--here, as in Switzerland, you don't eat until someone wishes you bon appétit.
Also in Switzerland, I bought some shoes. Some black leather shoes, to go with the gray pants I brought. They are leather, but I declined the water proofing that I was offered at the store. "They won't really get wet," I told myself.
Right.
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