The first week of classes is almost done, and I'm finally starting to feel like I've got a feel for things around here.
The basic structure of classes is that students are divided into levels, and within each level they are divided into groups of approximately 15. With those 15 students, you have one language class that meets for 10 hours a week (on Wednesdays we meet for 4 hours straight, two of which are completely filled with grammar. It. is. EXHAUSTING.) We also work on basic reading and listening comprehension, and verbal expression, so basically your all purpose class.
My French language class may very well be the most challenging class I take. The professor seems relatively easygoing, but she speaks very quickly and makes very little effort to enunciate, which makes her very difficult to understand. That said, having her for 10 hours a week I'll have to learn to understand her, and if I can understand her than I'll be able to understand a lot of people.
There is also an obligatory Phonetics class (which I would probably take even if it was optional) in which we learn IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet, which I already know, so that should help) and will presumably study things about pronunciation and diction.
In addition to the two obligatory classes, we have our choice of approximately 8 electives, which meet once a week for two hours. I think that most of them will be pretty enjoyable. In contrast to my French language class, I haven't had any difficulty understanding the professors who teach the electives, which is a welcome change after hours of having to work for it.
One of the classes concerns the influence of Greek mythology on French literature. In it we study specific Greek myths and then read French works that reference them. Mythology + Literature = Win.
I also have a Translation class, which I think I'm going to enjoy. Almost as soon as we got into the first class, the professor handed out sheets of paper with an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and had us translate parts of it. It will be nice to have a class in which I actually do things rather than just listening and taking notes as in most of the other classes.
Random note: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the British name for the book; evidently for some reason they changed it for US publication. On a similar note, The French title is Harry Potter à l'école des sorcières, which translated means Harry Potter at the wizard's school. Why they changed the title for this book I know not; all the others are pretty literal translations.
What might be my favorite class of all is actually the one to which I was initially the most drawn when reading course descriptions: Contes et traditions populaires, which basically translates to "tales and traditions of the people." Not only does it deal with the unifying elements that exist in all folklore and why those elements exist in relation to human nature (sounds awesome already, doesn't it?), the professor is amazingly energetic, engaging, and funny. It's my last class of the day on Wednesdays, and by the time I get there I've already been in class for 6 hours. Because she's so engaging though, I don't think I'll have much of a problem staying awake. My only worry about the class is that the professor seems to take very meandering routes to get to her points. She gets to them eventually, and most of what she says actually has a purpose, but if you're not paying attention it would be easy to get lost. Nonetheless, I think that that class will be awesome.
I'm pretty sure that when you add up the hours of my obligatory classes and all the electives that I plan on/am considering taking, you get a number around 20-22 hours. Oh well.
I still have the Phonetics lab and two potential electives to go to tomorrow, but my initial impression of my classes thus far is a distinctly postive one, and I think that I'll have a fulfilling semester, if rather challenging and busy.
If you've actually bothered to read this entire post rambling about my classes, then my commendations to you.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Bus Adventures
I started my classes in French this week, and I think that I'm going to like them.The first day started out rough, and is a fun little side story: I didn't know what time my classes started because the school was closed when I went to find out, so I got up at 6 so I could make it to the school by 7:30, just in case I had a class at 8. It was raining that day, so I decided to take the bus. Thinking that the line 2 bus was the only one that stopped at the stop by our house, I got on the first bus that came by without checking. Never do that. I quickly figured out that I was not on the correct bus, and that the bus I was on was quickly leaving Aix. Yay intercity buses. So at the next stop I sucked it up and asked the conductor the best way to get back to Place de la Rotunde. He told me that if I stayed on his bus I wouldn't make it there until 8:15, but if I got off here and went across the street then a bus would come that would take me back, so I head on across the street.
In the meantime, it's still dark outside because the sun hasn't yet risen, it's raining a consistent heavy drizzle, and I don't see the shelter by the stop for a very long time. After much effort, several sleepy and disgruntled friends, and a broken pen leading to ink all over my hands/ phone/ face, I manage to get in touch with someone who was at the school, and confirm that my classes start at 9 am.
After half an hour of waiting at that stop, A bus finally comes by. Lo and behold, it's the driver from the first bus that I mistakenly got on. After confirming that this bus would get me back to Aix, I settle down and make it to the school in plenty of time for my first class.
What a fun, pointless, could have been easily avoided misadventure. It made me feel rather paranoid, off balance, and homesick for most of the rest of the day, but when I got out of class I found my first bookstore here and proceeded to spend a week's budget in about 20 minutes. Some girls buy clothes to cheer themselves up; evidently for me it's books. Especially when I suddenly have thousands of options that weren't previously available, because they don't sell books in French in the US.
Don't get the wrong idea, that's the only bad day that I've had thus far, and it wasn't even entirely bad. It just made for a relatively interesting tale to relate :).
Moral of the story: never get on a bus without verifying that it's the right one.
In the meantime, it's still dark outside because the sun hasn't yet risen, it's raining a consistent heavy drizzle, and I don't see the shelter by the stop for a very long time. After much effort, several sleepy and disgruntled friends, and a broken pen leading to ink all over my hands/ phone/ face, I manage to get in touch with someone who was at the school, and confirm that my classes start at 9 am.
After half an hour of waiting at that stop, A bus finally comes by. Lo and behold, it's the driver from the first bus that I mistakenly got on. After confirming that this bus would get me back to Aix, I settle down and make it to the school in plenty of time for my first class.
What a fun, pointless, could have been easily avoided misadventure. It made me feel rather paranoid, off balance, and homesick for most of the rest of the day, but when I got out of class I found my first bookstore here and proceeded to spend a week's budget in about 20 minutes. Some girls buy clothes to cheer themselves up; evidently for me it's books. Especially when I suddenly have thousands of options that weren't previously available, because they don't sell books in French in the US.
Don't get the wrong idea, that's the only bad day that I've had thus far, and it wasn't even entirely bad. It just made for a relatively interesting tale to relate :).
Moral of the story: never get on a bus without verifying that it's the right one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Explorations
Today the school didn't have anything for us to do, so we had the day to ourselves. I went to meet Hugo, who is a student in Aix from last fall (the fall program doesn't end for a few days yet; one of the reasons I decided to study in the spring) with a bunch of the other new Abroadco students, and he and Mandy (another student in the same school as us) took us to a student cafeteria. Apparently there are several in Aix, and they serve affordable food to students. For € 2,40 you get a plate with three dishes and a small bowl which you fill at the salad bar. Today they served Ratatouille, some potatoes that were fried like french fries but in cubes of approximately a centimeter, and some form of meat on a stick in a sauce, of which I did not partake. The food was good, and actually affordable, which is always a plus.
After lunch, we split up into smaller groups and went around exploring. Emily and her roommate and I went to a bookstore and looked around for a while; it wasn't nearly as large as most American bookstores would be (seems to be a pretty common trait for most of the stores around here), and there was much less in the way of "recreational reading." There was one shelf about 3 feet wide that contained all of their teen/young adult books, but most of the store was occupied by litterature, poetry, drama, political, historical, and general informational books.
We then proceeded to Cours Mirabou, which is sort of the main street of Aix, and extends in either direction from Place de la Rotund, which is the city center. The photo at the top of the page is of Place de la Rotund (not mine; E put it up there, as well as doing the entire layout for this. Thanks E!) We went to a Monoprix, which is a large two-floor department store that's open 24 hours. It's like Wal-Mart in that they carry nearly everything, only much much classier. I bought some notebooks for class there, and discovered that they don't carry the lined notebook paper like we have in the US. all the notebooks are either graph paper or something that resembles our notebook paper with lots and lots of lines running both directions. If you were to take our notebook paper, and then put two lighter lines between every horizontal line (somewhat like calligraphy paper), and then draw blue vertical lines the same distance apart as the main horizontal lines, that's about what this paper looks like. The effect is that if you choose, you can turn your notebook on it's side and write lengthwise and still use guiding lines.
We then continued down the street, and bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor (they were quite tasty, but a large proportion of them were too burnt to eat), and some crêpes from another (also delicious). We ran into my roommate, who had gone for a run, got a bit lost, and ended up there, and then we all decided that we were tired and needed to go home. So my roommate and I braved the bus system for the first time because it was about 3 miles uphill back to the apartment, and we'd both walked/run that far to get there to start with. There isn't really much interesting to say about the busride, other than the fact that when it got into our neighborhood the bus turned down so many side streets and made so many loops that we were thouroughly confused as to where we were up until the moment when we realized that it was at our stop.
After lunch, we split up into smaller groups and went around exploring. Emily and her roommate and I went to a bookstore and looked around for a while; it wasn't nearly as large as most American bookstores would be (seems to be a pretty common trait for most of the stores around here), and there was much less in the way of "recreational reading." There was one shelf about 3 feet wide that contained all of their teen/young adult books, but most of the store was occupied by litterature, poetry, drama, political, historical, and general informational books.
We then proceeded to Cours Mirabou, which is sort of the main street of Aix, and extends in either direction from Place de la Rotund, which is the city center. The photo at the top of the page is of Place de la Rotund (not mine; E put it up there, as well as doing the entire layout for this. Thanks E!) We went to a Monoprix, which is a large two-floor department store that's open 24 hours. It's like Wal-Mart in that they carry nearly everything, only much much classier. I bought some notebooks for class there, and discovered that they don't carry the lined notebook paper like we have in the US. all the notebooks are either graph paper or something that resembles our notebook paper with lots and lots of lines running both directions. If you were to take our notebook paper, and then put two lighter lines between every horizontal line (somewhat like calligraphy paper), and then draw blue vertical lines the same distance apart as the main horizontal lines, that's about what this paper looks like. The effect is that if you choose, you can turn your notebook on it's side and write lengthwise and still use guiding lines.
We then continued down the street, and bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor (they were quite tasty, but a large proportion of them were too burnt to eat), and some crêpes from another (also delicious). We ran into my roommate, who had gone for a run, got a bit lost, and ended up there, and then we all decided that we were tired and needed to go home. So my roommate and I braved the bus system for the first time because it was about 3 miles uphill back to the apartment, and we'd both walked/run that far to get there to start with. There isn't really much interesting to say about the busride, other than the fact that when it got into our neighborhood the bus turned down so many side streets and made so many loops that we were thouroughly confused as to where we were up until the moment when we realized that it was at our stop.
French Family
I haven't really talked much yet about my french family; mostly that's because all these posts were actually made at the same time and backdated because I was busy and had some trouble with power adapters which spontaneously cease to work.
My host mom is really great; her name is Madame Charron, and she's very friendly and welcoming. She cooks delicious dinners every night which are served in multiple courses following the traditional French pattern more or less: first there's a soup or some sort of side dish, then a main dish, maybe a salad, then she offers us a cheese course (sometimes we're so full by then that we can hardly eat more) and then dessert, which is typically a small cup of yogurt, pudding, or fruit. She is an excellent cook, and hopefully later I'll be able to get her to teach me to cook some of the things she makes.
She's very insistent that we behave as though we were at our parent's house at home, says that we should take things from the fridge whenever we want and don't need to ask, sit in the sitting room and watch tv, and generally just wants us to be comfortable. She also didn't seem at all troubled when I told her that I'm vegetarian, which abroadco somehow forgot to tell her, or by the fact that my roommate is lactose intolerant. Despite effectively having two food groups made unavailable, she doesn't seem to have difficulty preparing food that we can all eat and that tastes wonderful.
My roommate's name is Greta, and she's from Seattle. We are getting along well thus far, and this is quite a fun paragraph to write because she knows about this blog, so it feels like talking about someone behind their back when you know they're listening. Hi Greta! Actually she's a horrible awful person and she's reading over my shoulder right now.
On to the apartment! It's a pretty decent sized apartment, we all have our own bedrooms. It's laid out around one central hallway. On the right side there's my bedroom, the sall de bain (the room with the bathtub and sink), Greta's room, and then Madame's room. On the left side is the toilette, the kitchen, and the living/dining room.
It's odd getting used to having the toilet in a separate room from the shower and the sink. The shower itself is odd, though somewhat typical of European showers from what I've seen. The showerhead is on a hose attached to the faucet, and doesn't have anywhere to hang, so you have to hold it yourself. There's a nob on the showerhead so that you can stop the flow of water without adjusting the temperature, and conserve water by not using it when you're soaping up etc. I keep forgetting about the switch and trying to turn the water back on with the knobs, then either freezing or burning myself. You also turn the cold and hot water in different directions to turn them on. The cold knob is turned forward, and the hot one back (I think), so you end up making a motion with your hands as if you're closing a jar to turn them both on.
I like my room; it isn't huge but it's plenty large enough. I have a full sized bed, a set of shelves with plenty of space, a waist height cupboard that I use for my clothes, and a beautiful antique desk that belonged to Madame's grandmother. And the walls are green.
All in all, my living situation is pretty great.
My host mom is really great; her name is Madame Charron, and she's very friendly and welcoming. She cooks delicious dinners every night which are served in multiple courses following the traditional French pattern more or less: first there's a soup or some sort of side dish, then a main dish, maybe a salad, then she offers us a cheese course (sometimes we're so full by then that we can hardly eat more) and then dessert, which is typically a small cup of yogurt, pudding, or fruit. She is an excellent cook, and hopefully later I'll be able to get her to teach me to cook some of the things she makes.
She's very insistent that we behave as though we were at our parent's house at home, says that we should take things from the fridge whenever we want and don't need to ask, sit in the sitting room and watch tv, and generally just wants us to be comfortable. She also didn't seem at all troubled when I told her that I'm vegetarian, which abroadco somehow forgot to tell her, or by the fact that my roommate is lactose intolerant. Despite effectively having two food groups made unavailable, she doesn't seem to have difficulty preparing food that we can all eat and that tastes wonderful.
My roommate's name is Greta, and she's from Seattle. We are getting along well thus far, and this is quite a fun paragraph to write because she knows about this blog, so it feels like talking about someone behind their back when you know they're listening. Hi Greta! Actually she's a horrible awful person and she's reading over my shoulder right now.
On to the apartment! It's a pretty decent sized apartment, we all have our own bedrooms. It's laid out around one central hallway. On the right side there's my bedroom, the sall de bain (the room with the bathtub and sink), Greta's room, and then Madame's room. On the left side is the toilette, the kitchen, and the living/dining room.
It's odd getting used to having the toilet in a separate room from the shower and the sink. The shower itself is odd, though somewhat typical of European showers from what I've seen. The showerhead is on a hose attached to the faucet, and doesn't have anywhere to hang, so you have to hold it yourself. There's a nob on the showerhead so that you can stop the flow of water without adjusting the temperature, and conserve water by not using it when you're soaping up etc. I keep forgetting about the switch and trying to turn the water back on with the knobs, then either freezing or burning myself. You also turn the cold and hot water in different directions to turn them on. The cold knob is turned forward, and the hot one back (I think), so you end up making a motion with your hands as if you're closing a jar to turn them both on.
I like my room; it isn't huge but it's plenty large enough. I have a full sized bed, a set of shelves with plenty of space, a waist height cupboard that I use for my clothes, and a beautiful antique desk that belonged to Madame's grandmother. And the walls are green.
All in all, my living situation is pretty great.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Placement Tests
I took the placement exams for classes today, which weren't as hard as I was afraid they would be. They were divided into sections of reading comprehension, grammar and vocabulary, oral comprehension, and writing. The questions in each section got progressively harder, so the first ones were really easy and the last ones were pretty tough. I feel like I did pretty well though, or at least that how I did is representative of my actual level.
Then there was an interview in French with a professor, to assess your ability to listen and to communicate verbally. I'm not sure I did quite as well as I could have, but I did pretty decently. The interviewer was very nice, and told me that my speaking level was right between levels 3 and 4. Personally I'm hoping to get placed in 4.
There are 5 levels classes in this school: Beginner, low intermediate, high intermediate, advanced, and Superior. Beginner is for students who have had no French, Superior is for students who are fluent or very nearly and just want to really polish their French, maybe because they're from Canada or Africa and want to learn to speak French French. So getting placed into level 4 would make me pretty proud.
Then there was an interview in French with a professor, to assess your ability to listen and to communicate verbally. I'm not sure I did quite as well as I could have, but I did pretty decently. The interviewer was very nice, and told me that my speaking level was right between levels 3 and 4. Personally I'm hoping to get placed in 4.
There are 5 levels classes in this school: Beginner, low intermediate, high intermediate, advanced, and Superior. Beginner is for students who have had no French, Superior is for students who are fluent or very nearly and just want to really polish their French, maybe because they're from Canada or Africa and want to learn to speak French French. So getting placed into level 4 would make me pretty proud.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Actually, it was car, airport, plane, airport, plane, airport, bus. 33 hours worth of them, of which I slept for one. Most of it was relatively un-noteworthy though, which is probably a good thing. At some point the neck pillow I brought broke open in my bag, resulting in very very tiny pieces of Styrofoam filling my bag and contaminating everything in sight, and making a huge mess for the poor stewardesses to clean up. It was ridiculously staticky too, so you couldn't just brush it off of things because it flew right back. I'm still finding pieces of it.
One thing happened on the flight to London that I consider pretty awesome: I had considered playing my mandolin at several points during the flight, but had decided not to because of other passengers, etc. But when we had two hours or so left, I thought "hey, we're 7 miles in the air, how awesome would it be to be able to say I'd played the mandolin 7 miles in the air?" and so I began to play, Irish music of course. I realized later that that sudden random urge had to have come to me almost exactly as we started flying over Ireland. Random, unconscious, and awesome.
Then there was a 7 hour layover in London, and a 2 hour flight to Marseilles (which is gorgeous from the air, especially in late-evening light), and a bus ride to Aix.
I feel it worth mentioning that I actually managed to get 5 months worth of stuff into one suitcase with extra space, but it weighed 53 pounds and the limit is 51, so I had to bring another suitcase to redistribute the weight. But I fit everything into one.
One thing happened on the flight to London that I consider pretty awesome: I had considered playing my mandolin at several points during the flight, but had decided not to because of other passengers, etc. But when we had two hours or so left, I thought "hey, we're 7 miles in the air, how awesome would it be to be able to say I'd played the mandolin 7 miles in the air?" and so I began to play, Irish music of course. I realized later that that sudden random urge had to have come to me almost exactly as we started flying over Ireland. Random, unconscious, and awesome.
Then there was a 7 hour layover in London, and a 2 hour flight to Marseilles (which is gorgeous from the air, especially in late-evening light), and a bus ride to Aix.
I feel it worth mentioning that I actually managed to get 5 months worth of stuff into one suitcase with extra space, but it weighed 53 pounds and the limit is 51, so I had to bring another suitcase to redistribute the weight. But I fit everything into one.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Test Post
Since Kristen doesn't have any posts up yet, I need to post something so I know how it might look in the layout tweaking.
Doop-dee-doo.
~ Globejuggler
Doop-dee-doo.
~ Globejuggler
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