I feel so helpless here sometimes. The project assistant has twice now brought to my attention advertisements for appartments for rent, but I have been too afraid of using the telephone to call. This afternoon she called for me, which I'm sure just perpetuates my problem, but its just too difficult. Everyone in the lab speaks English, and I don't really speak to anyone at the residence, so I don't get much opportunity to practice my French outside of my classes.

In related news, I am enjoying my French classes. I had forgotten the joy of learning about the structures of languages, and the rules and exceptions that either govern them or aid in one's understanding of them. Today we covered French pronouns of various flavours. They seem more complicated than their English counterparts but, like so many things, there are rules that help to narrow the ocean of things to cover. I think its a very important point, and relevant to my field of study, that many of these "rules" are not so much rules as guidelines, with exceptions and caveats. I think the ontology people understand this a little better than the object modelling people.