Once more, with feeling

Sometimes stubbornness can be a good thing. No, really! Maybe not so much in your average preschooler, but it has its merits.

Like me. I'm stubborn. Tenacious. Don't tell me I can't do something, because it pisses me off and makes me try harder. After I sulk and lick my wounds for a while, anyway.

Today I start yet another second language training course. Rather than being in a class of six people for four hours a week, it's just me and the teacher for six hours a day, twice a week, until the middle of May.

Those of you who've been around for a while will recall that I recently passed both my reading and writing exams with flying colours, and proceeded to fail my oral exam. The week I took the test was perhaps one of the most stressful of the year for me. I should have delayed it, but hind sight is always clearer, isn't it? Besides, I'm stubborn.

They mail you a little evaluation after the fact, and tick off areas you need to improve to achieve your next level. To my credit, there weren't too many tick marks - I must have been close. I got busted on things like 'your sentences were frequently strung together without the linking necessary to convey the message clearly.' Beloved looked over the evaluation, gave me a long look and said, "You can't do most of this stuff in English these days." He was right. I'm not sure if it made me feel better or not.

Alors, on essaye encore. My teacher is the same one I had before, and I like her a lot. Six hours a day of one-on-one language training is intense, though - at least in a classroom you can nod sagely while the other students are talking and zone out for a minute, or be relieved when somebody else continues to be perplexed by the subjunctive for the third day in a row. Private lessons means its all me, all the time. The Dani Show, in neither official language. Yikes!