Lost in Translation and Being Fooled...Twice.

Today was the first day that Alyssanne drove the truck and that was an interesting experience. At home she drives a Toyota Echo which is way smaller than our truck. While we were driving to the gas station in Schreiber we had a hilarious situation of trying to make Alyssanne understand that we had to go 90 kms on the Trans Canada not 60 or 70 kms. When I said go faster she thought I was saying she was going too fast and when I said she was going too slow she thought I was saying she was going to slow. Either that or she was just too scared to go fast in a truck.

To try and fix the situation I asked the French teacher at the school to write down a few sentences for me. I now know how to say 'You are going to fast', 'You are going to slow', 'You have to go faster' and 'You have to go slower'. Actually, the ride back home was much smoother (and quicker) and Alyssanne is getting more comfortable with the truck. Oh, and I also now understand the difference between tu droite and a droit (I'm not sure if that is how you actually spell the words though). One, droit, means straight and you don't pronounce the t. The other, droite, means right and you do pronounce the t. It's confusing but I'm getting it. And having those words is very useful. I was also able to say a longer sentence in French today, which leads me to the next part of my blog.

When Jessy, Alyssanne and I walked in the door today after work we all walked to the kitchen and promptly told Sarah that Alyssanne parks the truck better than her (after being coached in our French of course). Sarah didn't give us the reaction we expected (She was indifferent! After all that work) and then I heard an unfamiliar voice in the office. I stuck my head around the office door and saw a petite girl sitting talking to Terri. She stood up and introduced herself as Tracy...the new participant. We were cordial and nice but after going upstairs to change Alyssanne and I were confusedly talking about just WHY we have a new participant when we were expressly told that we were not going to be getting a new person (and a girl at that. WE NEED MORE TESTOSTERONE Headquarters!). It was then that I said my longer sentence with hal remembered words. It doesn't make much grammatical sense but I said, "Je suis content avec huit persons." which means "I'm happy with eight people." And then we went downstairs and learned tha$t Tracy was actually an alumni. Thank God. Even though it's only been two weeks and bit, I am still happy with our group and for someone to just drop in on it with us unprepared would be very uncomfortable. It's needless to say that I was very relieved that she was an alumni. At this moment Simon and Sarah are cooking dinner and Tracy will be staying over to eat.

However, this was not the first time we have been fooled. You may recall me saying earlier that we didn't have the same voltage in Terrace Bay and Schreiber. We were FOOLED. Terri is tricksy and we are gullible. I can't believe that we actually fell for it...Ontario is still Canada and that means that we have the same voltage. We were trying to conserve the battery power in our cellphones and we had such troubles because the cell phones were our alarm clocks and therefore had to be on all night in order to wake us up in the morning. And then Terri told us that she was fooling us all. And Jessy and Cassie figured it out two days before she told us and they pretended they didn't know! They laughed at us in secret. How rude.

I'm sorry. The door is open to the kitchen and people are talking which is making it hard to think. I feel like I'm not making as much sense as usual, or maybe not being as eloquent as usual. Either way, I hope this post was understandable.

Sara