Old Rag Mountain

To celebrate Zach's birthday yesterday, Rob, Lisa, Joe, Zach, and I hiked Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park. It's nothing compared to Longs Peak elevation-wise, but it was good preparation. The 7.5 miles and 2200' of elevation climb are just about half of the total distance and elevation gain we'll do at the end of the month. Both this and Longs Peak are "Class III" scrambles, so that was good practice. You can see some pictures that Rob and I took here. I'm not as sore today as I expected to be. Mostly, it's just the sides of my glutes. I guess I don't use them much! It sure was hot and humid yesterday; we were pouring sweat pretty much the whole time. But the post-hike hamburger and fries (and for me at least, margaritas) were that much better, having been hard-earned!

In other news, I took an oral exam on Friday to see how my French has progressed. I was rated a "2" in speaking ability and "2" in reading comprehension on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being about my ability in, say, Chinese and 5 being my ability in English. 3 is considered fluent, so this means I'm pretty functional, but still somewhat limited in terms of overall vocabulary and understanding of colloquialisms. For example, I think my boss is a 2/2 in English. Frankly, I think I'm more of a 2+ (they give +'s to people who are in-between levels) in speaking ability, but I'm borderline and it's a subjective test. Also one of my testers was a bit rude to me (and no, she wasn't from France!)--maybe that influenced my score. At any rate, I plan to keep reading a French news/opinion article every day on the train to work and listen to the Radio France International Podcast on my ride home every night. I think I'm also going to make it a goal to attend a French conversation event at least once a month. Fortunately, I have some friends and colleagues who are also in various states of learning French, so I won't have to go it alone.