A little run, just for fun

Our latest Brussels adventure was the annual Brussels Marathon. I heard about it about a week after we got into town and decided then and there that I was going to run it. Okay, so I never decided to run the marathon, I decided to run the half. In my opinion, a half-marathon is the perfect length for a challenging run. It's long enough that you feel it afterward, but not so long that you seriously injure yourself. It's all the fun of a marathon with only half the pain. Speaking of pain, I was a bit worried going into the run because my proposed training plan (downloaded off Runners' World.com, it called for a number of 7 plus mile runs) differed substantially from my actual training (Oktoberfest, beers in Brussels, multiple grande portions of french fries, one run over the course of the preceding 3 weeks). What the heck, I'm not that old yet, right? Hmmm....

The weather in Brussels had been absolutely amazing the week leading up to the race, and the day of the race turned out to be a repeat performance; 60 degrees and sunny with nary a could in the sky. At the bus stop I met a German guy wearing a "San Diego Lifeguard" shirt and he invited me to run with him and his Austrian buddy. They were great guys and we had a blast throughout, mostly making fun of the goofy costumes and the guy with a seriously inappropriate soccer jersey. The course was absolutely awesome; it basically made a loop through the city hitting all the tourist attractions and had plenty of gatorade and water stops. Jen met us where the course went near our house and snapped a few pics. I look really energetic, but don't be fooled, that was right around mile 2.5. Good little fall run.

The slings and arrows of une langue étrangère

Jen and I have taken a week and a half of french class now, and I think we're starting to get the hang of it. Our instructor seems to know when we understand enough to explain in French, and he also knows when things are so complicated that it's better if he explains in English. I still have serious issues understanding bus conversations I'm attempting to eavesdrop on, but all things come in time, right?

So today's class was a perfect example of the issues that will pop up during the study of a foreign language. During the course of the class we routinely do exercises, e.g. fill in the blank, sentence completion type work, and then we read our answers aloud in class. Our class is down to 3 of us now: Jen, me, and a girl from Japan named Yumi who was living in the Czech Republic, but now lives in Brussels and is learning French in English while dating a Flemish guy who refuses to speak French (that kind of multi-multi-multi national story is fairly commonplace here). The small class size reduces some of the nervousness of speaking in class, because we're all fairly close to the same level. That came in pretty handy today. In two sentences in a row I mispronounced rather innocuous words and instantly converted them to swear words, causing red faces all around. (If you must know, the word "queue" is pronounced, "cuh"{which means, line} and not "coo"{a slang word for the part of the body you sit on}; also the word pèser sounds a lot like a really bad word if you say it wrong})

After my butchering of the language today, it was funny to come home and see the following ad pop up in my hotmail.

For those of you who don't parler the français, that little snippet at the top says, "Nothing protects better against peepee in the bed!" If professional ad managers can use the word "pipi" in paid advertising, hopefully my little slips of the tongue can be excused!