1. I’m one of the most indecisive people in the world and can hardly ever make up my mind.
2. I’m impatient and hating waiting on others to make up their minds.
3. I’m more like my father than I like to admit and, like him, I love to have everything planned out ahead of time even though I pretend to be spontaneous.
4. I want to pursue a Masters and a Doctorate degree even though I’m scared to death of research and being published.
5. I’m only creative off of other’s ideas, which makes me feel quite uncreative and not original at all!
6. I’m a glossophile and polyglot.
7. I’m not really in love with the French language. I only had the choice of French and Spanish in high school and I had heard bad things about the Spanish teacher.
8. I’m obsessed with the country of Belgium.
9. I create my own languages and aspire to be like the great glossopoeia-ists.
10. I have like 20 ideas for books that I want to eventually write but I’m so scatter brained and change my mind every two seconds Like my constructed langauges, I don’t think they would ever be finished.
11. I broke both of my arms and my nose in the 6th grade falling from a rope latter into a ravine.
12. I have a short term addiction disorder where I become obsessed and addicted to something for a short period of time and then drop it (this is why it is hard for me to learn languages on my own).
13. My high school French teacher has honestly been one of the most influential people in my life and I really respect her for her wisdom and character.
14. I like the color blue because it is the only color where every shade is beautiful.
15.I LOVE Diet Coke even though I know it is bad for you.
16. I’m a night owl and NOT a morning person.
17. I bite my finger nails.
18. I’m not as into music as most people and RARELY listen to my itunes or ipod partly because I have ADD and a one track mind and can’t listen to music and do other things at once except drive.
19. I love school and wouldn’t be surprised that in the next 10 to 20 years I’ll get a few more higher degrees.
20. I love and miss my family a lot but have come to the realization that I don’t think I was destined to live the rest of my life in close proximity to them.
21. Someday I want to own “Le Petit Prince” in every language in which it was written.
22. I have made some of the greatest friends that anyone could ever hope for.
23.I love “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” at Bristol Bar!
24. There are days when I still think about my grandpa and start to sob from missing him so much.
25. I have a mac which is cracking and going all ghetto that I absolutely love…can’t wait until i get my next one!

This post is stored in the category of Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders



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Thank God for flame retardant treated wood shelves! I decided to make some fries and croque monsieur this evening and since I didn’t have enough frozen fries I decided to cut some up from a potato. I knew I had let the oil get too hot! Here in France I don’t have a fryer so I have to used a regular old pot on the stove to fry stuff. Anyway, when I went to put in my potatoes the oil got extremely hot and started bubbling and and I thought it was going to boil over so I picked up the pot and some of it spilled out onto the burner and then flames started rising everywhere! I freaked out and started blowing on the fire but that didn’t help but make it worse (I’m an idiot…and en plus I was a boy scout!) So I got some water (like I said I’m an idiot) and I threw it on the fire. I guess I never learned anything when I worked at a factory and they told us not to throw water on a oil fire! The flames shot up and started to make everything black! I just panicked and yelled fire….I mean…FEU!!! I ran next door screaming fire and got Alissa! She came in just in time to see that the flames had disappeared! The wall and the shelves above the stove were all black and we just sat there looking at it. I cleaned up the mess before I thought of taking a picture. My room now smells of burnt grease and oil….I guess I’m stuck with tuna tonight for dinner…yay!

This post is stored in the category of Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Alissa Morano, Cooking, Croque Monsieur, Fire, fries, Made in France

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Well, it is finally snowing here in Les Landes! So I was under the impression that it would never snow but it is actually snowing! There is about 1/4″ of snow on the ground and the kids are running around like they have never seen snow in their life!! It is really great! It makes me think of home and I’m so excited to see snow here! The people here are HILARIOUS! They are talking about how the buses will not circulate anymore and how it is going to take them an hour to get home when it usually takes 10 minutes! The teacher who takes me home on Thursdays has decided that she will not take the road that passes by the Adour river as she is afraid we would glide right into it! HAHAHA! This is great!! Best day yet!!!!

This post is stored in the category of Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Adour River, Les Landes, Neige, Snow

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Happy New Year everyone!

So Christmas and New Years as come and gone and we are in a new year. I’m not really good at keeping up on my website or updating my blog! It’s a bit “pénible”! I have so much time on my hands here and I’d rather lay around and do nothing but watch movies and stuff. I need to motivate myself to really get out there and start studying Basque more, learning Occitan (Gascon), and begin making my site more language oriented like I meant it to be!

Anyway, the last couple of weeks of school before break weren’t that eventful. I taught on christmas vocabulary, we made christmas cards, and I taught them how to make snowflakes. I taught my brightest class how to make the 3D snowflakes that I learned to make last year! It was great! We started chrismtas break on the 20th of December. I had decided to go to Paris on the 23rd with Alissa, the Canadian and her friend, Julie, who is teaching English in Korea. Julie had never been to Paris so we went and saw all the normal touristy things. Will, the American and his friend Josh were suppose to meet up with us on the 24th but they didn’t. We visited the Eiffel Tower and the Père Lachaise cemetery where people like Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, James Morrison, Chopin, etc. are buried. We had planned to go to the Midnight Mass at the Notre Dame and little did we know that we would be sitting right smack in the front. It was pretty cool. The choir was exciting to say the least as one girl fainted and two boys were asked to leave during the performance. The French are weird!

On Christmas day tons of things were open. We got a nice Christmas brunch and then headed up into the Eiffel Tower. After that the girls wanted to go ice skating but it was too busy so we decided to find some place to go and sit as it was cold. We found a cafe and finally met up with Will and Josh. That night back in the hostel, or perhaps I should say the next morning, we were awaken by a boy vomiting all over the floor. Apparently he had drank a whole bottle of red wine by himself and it was the first time he had ever had alcohol in his whole life! The smell was putrid and sickening! Julie got up and left the room along with another guy who was in our hostel bedroom. Alissa and I toughed it out. Alissa never went back to sleep but instead got up and decided to take an earlier train to Germany with Julie. I was suppose to be catching a train at 4 with Will and Josh but they ended up being late and missed the train a half hour after mine already left for Lille and didn’t end up getting to Lill for another hour and a half as I waited around for them.

We had planned to go to Belgium together from the 26th to the first and had all bought tickets for €24 from Belgium back to France. Well because of complications I ended up returning home to Dax by train on the 28th. I met up with my best friend from exchange, Diana, in Bordeaux and we celebrated the New Year there. It wasn’t that exciting but it was definitely better than being all alone in our respective little towns!

I promise and make a new years resolution to keep up with my blog and start writing about more fun things than just my stupid life! I swear! This is suppose to be a blog about Glossophilia (as well as the the glossophile) anyway!

Hope you are all doing well! Love you!

This post is stored in the category of Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Alissa Morano, Basque, Blog, Bordeaux, Christmas, Diana Barger, Drunk Stranger, Gascon, Julie, Midnight Mass, New Years, Occitan, Paris, Will Stinton

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