Speaking of accents, I think it's time to discuss my language professor once more. Oh, Madame Maréchal... she has really been a riot lately. I have started writing little notes in my notebook during class when she does something noteworthy so I can remember it and laugh about it later. So the next million stories are all her and her Frenchy self. I'm glad it's through her that I am not only learning French, but also culture. Not sure if it can be transferred to all French people, but I'd like to believe it could be.
Okay, I was going to talk about accents. Right. So over the past couple of weeks we've had to give oral presentations of at least ten minutes to our class. Most of my language class is Asian, but are pretty good speakers. I am awful, but it's not a big deal because there is this other guy. He's American and has the most American accent when speaking French ever. Pretty sure he doesn't even try. He's the nicest guy, super sociable (I think he's talked to about everyone at least once in our entire school), and can spurt out French like crazy. Only thing is it sounds, um, not so Frenchy and his grammar is treacherous. During orals, Mme Maréchal never really interrupts anyone when they're speaking and doesn't correct us unless what we've said is totally off. However, during 
his oral, she stopped him after the first few words and translated for the rest of us what he had said. And continued to do this the entire time, getting more and more exasperated and laughing at his overuse of 'apparemment' (apparently) which was about every four words. He can handle all her nagging, and he'd try to resay the words but they just wouldn't even improve. It was hysterical because it was just our prof translating his badly pronounced French into real French for us. We were all in tears. (Photo: Valerie and Lindsey enjoying Nice)
I have come to the realization that my professor really likes demonstrating what she means, but tends to reeeeally demonstrate, uh, well. She was explaining the word 'meuble' (noun for 'furniture' and adjective for 'light') and how it became the French word from Latin (we do that a lot... including the phonetic morphology... which is her just making weird sounds from the Latin to the French with about six other random sounds in between). Anyway, she ended up picking up one of the desk tables (they're big enough for three people to sit at, so we're not really messing around here) and put it on top of her head, legs up in the air. Why? I'm not sure, but it's always fun when you have a professor making weird noises WHILE she has a table on her head.
Another time she yelled 'Merde!!', paused, and then peered out the door to our classroom which opens to the courtyard where people mill around between classes... to see if anyone heard her.
When we were learning the French equivalents to 'wherever, whatever, whenever, whoever,' she said the words in English and called them the 'Shakira syndrome.' And has continued to call the French equivalents as such since then.
Just recently, it was explained to us that rap is not good. Saying (and she said the following words in English): 'shit, bitch, whore' does not make a song of quality because most of the time the rhythm is off. There is 'an art to being vulgaire', and it requires putting words together in a certain way, and people suck at it. Shakespeare was the best rapper, she thinks. So she's a little old-fashioned, whatevs. Apparently she speaks German like an author from the 18th century as well, just because that's the kind of books she reads and she told us we will speak in a manner that matches what we read. And so when she's gone to Germany, she gets laughed at for sounding archaic, but she doesn't care. It'd be like trying to have a conversation with someone who's speaking Old English or Shakespearean type English, I assume. Absolutely bizarre, but perhaps a little awesome.
Hmm... those might be the majority of the French language professor stories for now. Wait, one more. We got a lowdown on why it is that maybe foreigners think French people are rude. They are not rude, they are merely honest. You don't smile at someone you don't know in the street because that leads you to think, "Who was that and why were they smiling at me?" And she doesn't get why everyone else has to pretend they like people if they really don't. "You have the right to not like people... you're being honest." What wisdom.