First Day of School!

Today was the first official day of classes for my program, the IRFFLE (cool name huh?)! I got up early just to make sure I would make it on time, but it did not help any that I was paranoid about oversleeping! Two points for waking up every hour! Even though I had closed my window for the night, my room was quite chilly this morning so I had to layer up while checking facebook (a part of my daily routine!).

But have no fear, because I soon found an apple and pain au chocolat!

After this delicious breakfast, it was time to pack things up and head off into the big scary world that is France! If anyone is excited give me a thumbs up!

I made it to school with plenty of time to spare and come to find out, the teacher was ten minutes late and there were only 7 students in the class when there were supposed to be 17...hmm. One reason behind this is that half of the papers were were given at orientation said that classes started today and the other half said next week. Also, online, it shows my program starting next week as well so I feel like there was just a huge failure to communicate here. Having said that class went very well. My first one was a writing and textual analysis class which turned out to be pretty interesting. The teacher kept us focused and wasn't too strict. She even told us an analogy about reading in French. She said that it is like jogging (so seeee the French really do do it!), the first time is difficult, the second time is easier, and after that it gets better and better with a little practice! I liked this way of looking at it, but it still doesn't make having to read newspaper articles any more interesting :(

After 2 and a half hours of this class, with the sun shining right in my face the entire time (*see note at the bottom for an explanation), it was finally lunch time where I made a trip to the mini cafeteria with some other students and had a ham, cheese, butter (just do it, it's amazing), lettuce, tomato, and egg sandwich for a whopping 2.50. Gooooo student prices!

Just an hour later, our next stop was our French culture class. There are yet again the same 7 plus one more so we were then only lacking 9 students! The teacher for this class however managed to surprise me because he is a man of probably 30 to 40 years of age, who walked in with jeans, a dark colored button down, a denim jacket, and long hair. He did not introduce himself, but instead started taking the roll and began lecturing. Btw, this man unlike my first teacher, does not like to enunciate or slow down so here was our first big challenge! Our first assignment was to come up with 5 words or phrases that identify French culture. He picked my group to go first and we had the 5 he was looking for. BABAM! Thank you Dr. Schaller and Culture and Civilization from GC&SU! Overall, I really enjoyed his class even though at time it did get a little dry, but he displayed a good bit of emotion and laughed a lot so that helped to perk us up. He did manage a few good jokes though! Oh and for some reason, every teacher or speaker that I have had so far has said the same thing - "Tout est politique en France" (Everything is political in France), and this is surprisingly true!

*The electricity does not work in the buildings most of the time for some reason so that is why there is a wall of windows in each classroom! The only downside of this is that the sunshine can get super bright and hot if you are sitting by said window. Unfortunately today, this unlucky fellow happened to be me :) But, it is ten times better than being cold!