After 3 private lessons and 6 intensive classes, I think I'm ready for the Intermediate I class. I am registered for the Thursday evening class with Coralee, which was the teacher that I was working with for the private lessons. She holds no illusions about my level of speaking ability. For better or worse.

The intensive classes were a lot of fun. I had come into the class part way in, but I wish I had the time to have gone to all of them. The people in class with me were all really cool, and we formed a really cool little social group, too. Almost everyone from the class made it out to morning tea today.

The classes themselves were fairly rigourous. There was a large emphasis on speaking, and much of the work was done in pairs. We'd take a bit of time for preparation to look up what we wanted to talk about, and then we flailed our vocabulary at each other. Some of the topics were vacation planning, past vacations, sports, films and books. There was more than enough room to learn new ideas, and a fair amount of opportunity to tie in things that we already knew. We all had a lot of fun with it, and I think everyone found the approach very useful. When the instructor asked us of our opinions after we finished up, everyone's comments were very positive. It helps that Catherine was a good teacher. Fun, too.

From here, a few of our class are taking an Intermediate I class with Catherine on Wednesday nights, and a few of us will be taking the same class with Coralee on Thursday nights. I think we all made friends, though. We traded phone numbers, and we'll try to catch up every once in a while. It's like our own little portable french community.

I think I've reached a new level of What the fuck?! I stopped off at an italian grocery store today to see what sort of stock they kept. I was getting a bit nostalgic for the mediterranean market in Christchurch. This was a fair bit smaller, but had some really impressive stuff. I sampled a few different olive oils, vinegars and condiments. I ended up walking out of there with an incredible (and incredibly expesive) bottle of olive oil.

I don't think I've ever been passionate about olive oil before, but I think I have learned something today. Supermarket oils are crap. However, they're reasonably priced. I'm definitely going to have to take care of this bottle.

   Egg Fettuccine
   dried rosemary
   dried thyme
   dried sage
   cracked pepper
   olive oil

   Prepare fettuccine as instructed.  Grind pepper and herbs
   in a mortar and pestle.  When fettuccine is ready, strain
   and add a liberal amount of olive oil.  Add herbs and mix
   thoroughly before serving.