I slept at about 10 PM last night and woke up at about 6 AM. Today is a windy and cloudy day. The wind hit the door outside the window hard, and it was so loud that I was worried if that would wake up my neighbors. As part of my morning routine, I started practicing French listening for 90 minutes. This is because that is what I have struggled with the most when it comes to studying French. My focus level in the morning is very high, so I would like to take advantage of that. Today was a pretty productive day. I could do pretty much everything that I was going to do, even if I was talking with an American guy for a couple of hours.
Today’s topic is about my neighbors who live in the same apartment. This apartment is a shared house, so although we have individual rooms, we share other spaces, such as dining, kitchen, bathroom, and shower room.
As far as I know, 7 people live here, not including me.
There is one girl whose age is 13 years old, and she is actually one of the Judo students whom I practice with. Another girl is her older sister, whose age is 18 years old. She practices volleyball. I often see that they spend time together. And I heard from the young sister that the old sister cooks for her. That is so sweet for me. At first, I couldn’t realize that they were related because they looked different. I do not really know about the older sister, but I talked to the younger sister a little bit using Google Translate about a week ago, after we finished practicing. We had a small talk, and I remembered that I asked her what her dream was, and she said she would like to be a doctor and a Judo champion. I am not sure which level of champion she wants to become, but I was impressed that she had clear goals. And, as a person who teaches and likes Judo, I was happy to hear that. Regardless of her quietness and shyness, her Judo is very powerful and aggressive. I hope that she will become a big Judo champion one day.
Also, there is a young guy who is 18 years old. A couple of days ago, he started talking to me in broken English. Again, using Google Translate, we talked a little bit. It turned out that he is not a student but works somewhere. The biggest impression on him was that he smokes a lot. I have often seen him smoking. He is a nice young man. I hope that he won’t smoke a lot in the future.
Another skinny guy is a student or intern who looks late 20’s like my age. He speaks good English, so sometimes when I talk with an American guy, he joins the conversation. I do not know him well. All the information that I got about him is that he is originally from a Northern city in France. He is a very nice person as well.
A next neighbor is a math teacher who probably has Indian heritage. I am not sure whether his English accent is from India or France, but he also speaks English well. I have never talked with him about his personal stuff, so I haven’t gotten to know him yet. He usually puts on headphones over his ears and watches something on his phone.
Another person is a guy who looks 50’s. I am sure that he is the oldest person among the people who live here. He looks a little bit grumpy, so I have hesitated to talk to him. I have no personal information about him. However, from my observation, he is good at cooking and knows a lot about this apartment. I assume that he has lived here for a long time.
The last person is an American guy that I have talked about before. He is the closest neighbor. He is from San Francisco and speaks English and Spanish. I have talked with him a lot. He came to France about one week before I got to France. And he and I started living here pretty much at the same time. I had never seen him before I came here, but the owner of this building told me about that, so I knew that there was a guy from the US. And I was curious about him. But I was not sure, at first, which one was him. To me, American and European people look the same. And one day, in the morning, I found a guy who was doing something with his laptop in the dining room. I was kind of nervous to start talking to him because I was worried that he was not the American guy that I was looking for. But I decided to do that. I think that I said “Bonjour” and asked whether he was from the US. Looking back, it was kind of an awkward situation, but luckily, he was the guy that I was looking for. We talked for a while afterwards. I am not going to talk about him a lot today, but I am glad that there is a person with whom I can communicate here, or else it would feel lonelier to live here. I am definitely going to talk about him at some point in this diary. He is going to stay here for pretty much the same period as me.
I am glad that every person is very nice and kind. Hopefully, I can get to know more about them. This is a kind of fun part of staying in a shared apartment.
I have been comfortable living here so far. I am planning to live here for about 2 more weeks.
That’s it for today. See you tomorrow. Bonne nuit!