?:30 in the AM

Although I'm still quite pleased about my internship placement, I am having some hesitations about what to do for tomorrow. I received an email today from Alexandra, who is in charge of everything regarding work. Here's how it went:

Chere Alaina,
je viens d'avoir la bibliotheque am?caine. Nous avons rendez vous demain mercredi 20 septembre ?h30 le matin.
Viens ?'IML ?h et nous irons ensemble.
Bonne journ?/FONT>
Alexandra

Now, I'm used to the characters in my emails from French people being all screwy, and most of the time I can guess at what they're trying to say. However, what bothers me here is that she is saying, essentially, is that she will accompany me to the American Library tomorrow, Wednesday, the 20th of September, at "?:30 in the morning". Uhh! What? Crap! What time could that be? Since there's only one question mark, I devine that it's either 7, 8, or 9:30 in the morning. If it's 7:30, well then I'll just miss my interview because there's no way that I can get down there that early. I'll play it safe and pretend that it's 8:30. But wait! Before, they warned everyone to get to the office a half hour early so that we'd make it to our interview on time. Is this the time to meet at the office, or the actual meeting? Because of this little nuance, I now have be at the IML office all the way in the middle of the city at 8:00 in the morning for an appointment that could very well be at 9:30. I'll be sure to bring a book.

Speaking of books, I'm still flying through them. I think it's because I feel so disobediant while reading them, like English is this forbidden voodoo language. I'm almost finished with Great Expectations, which I always got about halfway through before but could never read the whole enchilada.

Oh, yes. Classes. They went quite well today, despite the French Language course that lasted three hours. That was a tough one. I really like my Literature class, for no other reason except that I've already had to read most of the books and poems on the syllabus so I already have a distinct advantage. The teacher was a no-nonsense kind of prof so hopefully a lot of the students will drop it, since there were way too many in the class. We had to do a diction exercise in Grammar, which I've never done in my entire life. It consisted of her reading out this long, complicated passage while we frantically tried to write down exactly what she was saying. It didn't help that most French words have about six extraneous letters that aren't pronounced, but I think I did well.

I should be revered and admired by friends and relatives alike - last night at dinner, Madame pulled out a plate at dinner and set it in the middle of the table, to the delight of both girls. They wanted me to try some. I wish I had a picture. It was - I kid you not - raw slices of ham with cantelope. Oh! Lord! I was goaded into trying some, and while it wasn't horrible, it didn't taste like much more than raw meat on fruit. And they say peanut butter is repulsive.