Buna sera!
The first week of classes ended today, and I have just returned from a very late dinner with some friends both old and new. The weather in the Surselva area of the canton of Graubünden has been grey and rainy all week, with the only exception being yesterday. Today was, and is, the worst of all. I was awakened by a thunderstorm just before 06.00 and the rain hasn’t stopped since (and I am composing this message at 23.00).
I have had a good week in class, no change of clothes needed. The lessons seem to me to be easy, as the part of language acquisition I like the best is learning about the grammar, the rules, the exceptions, the differences between what one writes and what one actually says, and so on. I am never at a loss for questions in class.
Because of the poor weather I did not go out after class, except to walk to the restaurant. So I stayed in and did all my homework, and thus left myself with a free weekend. Weather permitting, I will walk to Glion (in German: Ilanz) to visit their bookstore, Maggi.
Glion is a 6-km walk–fortunately downhill. If I have the time, I will walk back to Laax. Since I can spend hours in a bookstore and I do want to do other things tomorrow, if I am limited for time, I will take the post bus back. There will always be a bigger selection of Romansch books for sale at the Lia Rumantscha in the Graubünden capital, Chur, however the Lia Rumantscha is not open on the weekend. I have hardly bought anything on this trip so far, except for those books when I first arrived in Zürich one week ago.
The Breton course I am enrolled in will start the week following the Romansch course. The organizers of this course sent me an E-mail today with more details about the logisitics in getting there. Grab a map of France or Brittany and look for Plésidy, or Plijidi as it is known in Breton. Plésidy is in northwest France in the department of Côtes-d’Armor (Aodoù-an-Armor in Breton). Those who know me perhaps a bit too well will know that I do not dot my lowercase I’s and J’s (I haven’t since grade six). I remember in university I wrote a one-page essay in longhand in French class, and when I got it back, it looked as though the professor had dripped blood all over it. His felt-tip marker had dotted every I and J in bright red. Instead of being written by a student of university age when I handed it in, my essay lost about thirteen years when I got it back. It looked like a paper a child could have written, purposely dotting the I’s and J’s in a different colour. So perhaps I will refrain from writing my postcards from Plijidi–really what I do is print my postcards–in block capitals. The Breton name for the village I will be studying in, Plijidi, is just *daring* me to resist dotting these letters. Armchair psychoanalysts: have a field day!
The title of this message, Ei dracca, is Romansch for “It’s raining cats and dogs”.