astridv | (no subject)

~~Could one of the French speakers take a look at this email and tell me if it's okay?~~ I was going for short & concise, but I don't want to be short & rude. (I'm just glad I discovered their email addy and don't have to do this by phone because, yikes. o.O)

subject: reservation de HI Angoulème

Mesdames et Messieurs,
je voudrais faire une reservation pour 1 personne (f) pour 27. Janvier - 31. Janvier 2010 (4 nuits). Je suis membre de Hostelling International, mon numéro de membre est [number].
Cordialement,
[name] [taken care of :o)]

Today in French class there were three of us plus teacher. Then one fellow student had to leave early which left the teacher, the guy who's fluent, and me. And we weren't enough students to do the excercises she had planned, so it was all conversation all the time. We switched to German on occasion but still, boy, I'm wiped. I mean, I was wiped before the class - spent all day coloring a scene which proved to be really tricky (Limited view, in heavy fog. That sure looked easier in my head.)

Tomorrow I'll take a day off to visit my dad in the hospital. Knee replacement; he's really been looking forward to it. I hope the recovery will go well and he'll be able to play sports again the way he wants!

Anyway, I plan to use the train ride to get some sketching done. I already got a really neat prompt for my SGA fic/art exchange. :)

some linkage: via

cofax7 I found this video of a guy performing Free Running, which is basically the art of Jedi without lightsabers and telekinesis. That led me to discover Parkour, and then I spent some time searching YouTube for vids of Parkour and free running. Spectacular. Here's a video of a training session. I found it surprising that one of the guys who teaches the class has been doing it for 20 years... I'd figured that one just couldn't practice parkour for that long... the human body can't be made for that kind of strain... Anyway, it's fascinating to watch.

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Yeah, parkour looks impressive. I've watched an interview once with one of the rather few (as I understand) women doing this, and that was really interesting. She was talking about how it was harder to interest girls for the courses, because especially with teenagers the boys just start out with more muscle mass and can do all these jumps and pulling themselves up and so on easier at first, but apparently down the line stamina and such works out okay for women sticking with this too.

IIRC she offered all women courses and practice too so participants starting out wouldn't feel as self-conscious. As I remember the interview she didn't actually thought of it as an extreme sport, peraps because people can add flourishes and difficulty as they like, with just this idea to go directly in a straight line in cityscapes. Considering that personally I can't even really manage one pull-up I can just stare at these things incredulously, but I suspect she was thinking more from a baselineof fairly fit people, lol. In any case she looked really hot doing these Spiderman-like maneuvers too.

Yaaaayyyy! :)

Heee.
I'll think up my prompts for you today, now that my brain isn't occupied with work. :)

Interesting. I can see how it would be discouraging for young girls to even get into this sport. But I'm telling you, if I was twenty years younger, I'd be tempted. I sucked at school sports because I'd turn into a useless glob with two left hands whenever a ball came flying in my direction - but I could do twenty pull-ups just hanging from our stairs by my fingers. Otoh, I froze when I had to jump over wooden obstacles of any kind. But maybe all the more reason to pick a sport like that, get over that fear.

(Recently I discovered to my horror that I can't do a single pull up. I'm determined to train for pull-ups at the gym.)

I don't know if I'd ever have seriously considered practicing an art that looks so injury-prone. But it's so fascinating. And looks like a lot of fun, too!