On the Importance of Verb Tenses

I recieved a note in my room yesterday, which, upon reading quickly, I decided said that my room had been cleaned that day. However, had I been more attentive to the future simple verb tense, or the day's date for that matter, I might have realized that the note was actually alerting me to the fact that my room was going to be cleaned today, September 8th. Sadly, I remained under the rather dense impression that they had already cleaned it but had done a kind of shabby job since I saw no visibile signs of its having been cleaned. I did however read the rest of the note which reminded me to straighten my room for the cleaning crew by making sure that I pick things up from the floor under my bed and desk. But, as I thought the cleaning had already been done, I figured it was unnecessary to do any such straightening until next week when I would be prepared for their cleaning schedule.

Imagine my surprise this morning then, to hear a knock on my door as I was groggily checking my email in my pajamas. And who was there to greet me but a rather surly "femme de chambre"... My French came surprisingly easily for my just-awoken self and I managed to ask if it was possible for her to return later. She made it quite clear that this was not possible - it was now or never, but she would give me a few minutes while she cleaned the room across the hall. So I scurried around my room to get dressed, grab some food to go, pick everything up off my floor and get the heck out of there before she came back. I made it, but didn't really have anywhere to go, because I still needed to shower and check my email before I started doing the things I had planned for the day. So I ended up just down the hall in my floor's kitchen, eating breakfast (bread and nutella, apple sauce, orange juice) and starting to write this blog entry. I'm pretty sure she saw me sitting down there and kiind of glared in my general direction... Hopefully this won't be a repeat occurance, but if cleaning day is always Tuesday, it may be because I don't have class on Tuesday and will probably want to sleep in.

Fortunately, my self confidence is already recovering after taking the serious blow of this mistranslation - a woman in the Administrative office expressed surprise when she saw on my form that I was an exchange student! And that was even after I had spoken several sentances of French!! whoo!