Try To Do It In French, Eh?

I can't think of a real theme for this week, although trying is probably a good one. The last few days have been a weird mélange of different activities and moods. The main excitement this week was the start of classes (finally) and the beginning of our new schedules. As usual, I went notebook shopping in the highest spirits (although let me just say that although the French believe that their strange "lined" paper is superior to good old college ruled, they are sorely mistaken), and, as usual, I had fun organizing my schedule and entering it all into my planner. I didn't exactly feel the excited butterflies I usually do upon the eve of a new semester, but I was more than ready to start classes (and my internal clock that tells me when to be excited about school and when to hate it is obviously quite thrown off given that by this time in the semester, I would usually be buried deep in readings and essays). But after excited preparations, our experience thus far with classes has been rather anticlimactic.

Some classes are better than others, but overall, I just feel kind of ehh about everything. I think my French will improve a lot through the language classes, even though most of them are kind of boring. Oral expression was my favorite class so far (it was actually fun), and I really hope it will help me get better at speaking. Our writing classes were fine; we spent most of class doing exercises and then going over them. Not really the most scintillating teaching technique, but at least we have something to do. Monday through Wednesday we only have two or four hours of class and we can get lunch off-campus, so even if the classes aren't amazing it's not all day. Today (Thursday), however, is just ridiculous. It felt like high school all over again, except in no way as fun (but I did get starving every hour, just like in high school... too bad I don't have my dad to make me lunches). We had class from 9-11, 11-1 and 1:30-4:30. All ten of us are in the last class, so at 1 we went to the amphitheater and arranged some chairs and tables in the hallway, inhaled some lunch and put the hallway back together before class started. Our three-hour class was not uninteresting, but the length was torture. I don't understand the need for such a long class-- surely it is not the professor's goal to have sixty students staring at him with glazed eyes and slack jaws. I would so much rather have an hour or hour and a half of class more than once a week.

The professors here are mostly nice but very French-- like Michel, except not as sympathetic (haha). They tend to just start lecturing on something without really introducing it, and then they will just present all the information and move on. Grammar class was literally exhausting today. I don't think I have ever been pulled through so many grammar concepts in one day. We covered pretty much every part and mode of speech ever and then spend a solid hour copying down verb conjugations. I felt like I was running through a textbook-- or being dragged through it by a semi truck. And I love grammar. It is my favorite thing about languages. Saying I hate grammar is pretty much blasphemous-- yet I was so exhausted after our two hours with Gilles that I admit it popped into my head.

During our first written expression class, we were doing an activity we didn't fully understand (in keeping with the just-dive-into-things method, we seem to start activities for which we would be given a lot more information in an American class; we are expected to get everything wrong and then by halfway through the exercise we will get it) and our professor was walking around reading our sentences and telling us whether or not when we were on the right track. When he got to me, he read it and said, "Try to do it in French, eh?" He spends all of class cracking jokes, and no one else was doing it right either, so I didn't take it to heart (and I even got a "tres bien" by my third sentence), but it sure was an interesting way to start off my French studies here!

Because of dealing with classes and homework (not that I have started any of it yet since our classes only meet once a week... this is going to be interesting), this week has been pretty stressful and not left a lot of time for much else. However, I did discover a delicious pasta place with Emily, had a fun movie and dinner at the Centre Condorcet last night (we watched the movie version of L'Amant, the book we read for Michel last semester, and entertained ourselves making fun of it), and succeeded in finding peanut butter at the grocery store! And this might sound weird, but one of my favorite parts of the week has been riding the bus to school. I have always really liked transportation-- I love airplanes, I love driving, and here, I love the bus, because it is time when you can't do anything else but wait to get to where you are going, and you can just think and relax. It's fun to see the city and I familiarize myself with it more each time. Plus, I tried to blend in with the French students by listening to my iPod on the bus, and the new "Glee" songs I downloaded made my ride to school feel pretty epic. :)

Tomorrow I am going to look for new boots, because mine sadly and tragically have a hole in the heel, before meeting people for pasta and then heading to literature class, which is one of our culture classes that only meets every other week (I dropped theater in favor of literature and the time to take dance classes). On Saturday, we are taking our first excursion with Nathalie! We're doing a day trip to Beaune, where we will visit the famous hospices as well as some wine caves. I'm really looking forward to relaxing this weekend (and working on plans for friends visiting/trips/spring break!). À bientôt!