Christmas Parade

Blake Truman (General Manger) hanging on window

I helped organized and participated in a Christmas Parade for the town of Greencastle, Pennsylvania on November 23rd. Verstandig Broadcasting was in charge of organizing the parade and getting the floats and participants in position. I was on scene at around 7:30 that morning and did not leave until around 11 the same morning.

I was tasked with helping arriving participants find their position in the parade. There were several participants that showed up with more vehicles than they had registered to bring and therefore took up more space than they were supposed to. This resulted in a very crowded and chaotic street before the parade even started. Once the parade began moving, we made sure all of the participants moved out in their designated positions and that they walked or drove at the appropriate pace. Once all of the other participants had gone, the 104.7 WAYZ van and the 101.5 Bob Rocks vehicle (Bob Force One/BFO) drove right in front of Santa's sleigh which was the final display of the parade. I rode in the BFO along with Manic (Crazy Bob) and threw candy out to the children. It was a great time.

French Film

On Wednesday October 30th I attended the showing of a French Horror film. This took place a little while after the French discussion table I had attended. It was held in an upstairs room in the Rams Den building.

Though I do not remember the name of the film, I do know that it was a very interesting experience. I was amazed by the fluidity of their speech. To hear such a romantic language spoken in such harsh tones and in such fearful tones was very unique. The subject matter of the film was not bad but it is difficult to really appreciate the full nature of a film without first being immersed in the films origin culture. That being said, I was still on the edge of my seat from this thriller. At points you got so swept up into the action that you forgot to read the subtitles and just focused on what was happening on screen. Their actions portrayed what they were thinking and feeling better than their words could. I believe this is why they say you should watch television and movies from the culture of the language you are trying to learn because it can really give you a context for which to place the words and phrases.

Second French Discussion Table

I attended a second French Discussion table on Wednesday October 30th. It was held at the Blue Moon Cafe here in Shepherdstown. This discussion table was a lot less formal and I actually got a chance to really talk to the French students without it being refereed by the professor.

I introduced myself and they introduced themselves in turn. I asked them to tell me what it was like to study French and they told me of the difficulties as well as the easier parts. Having studied German myself for two semesters I related my experiences with that to theirs. There were some structural issues with the languages that we found to be similar as well as some cognates (words that sound similar and mean the same thing in two languages such as destroy and destruir, the first is English and the second is Spanish.) Overall I found that learning French can be conceptually easy but to execute the pronunciation and sentence structure properly can be quite difficult.

French Discussion Table

On October 21st I attended a French Language discussion table at Mellow Moods here in Shepherdstown. I am personally not a student of the French language but I have always been very interested in foreign languages.

I am at far right being washed out by the sun

The discussion table started with the hosting professor wanting to go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves in French. I heard two people go before me and just mimicked their words and pronunciation but substituted my name and what I do. They were especially interested in the my being a voice actor. It opened a discussion about all different kinds of foreign languages and accents. I quite enjoyed it.