French classes and a weekend in Normandy.

A lot has been going on since my last update.

Last Monday, I had my first class at French university. For the first month in Paris, I only had my 2 courses with Sweet Briar (my program) to attend. These courses have only other SBC students in them, which means very low on the intimidation factor. My first Sorbonne class was a Linguistics TD (basically a subsection). For Linguistics, I have a CM, which is a large lecture class, and a TD, the smaller class in which tests, papers, etc. are done. So the class was scheduled to start at 10.30, and I planned to meet Tara at 10.10 to walk there together. The walk took no more than 2 minutes, so we had quite a while to wait. We just kind of stood there, looking at the French students, not speaking to each other so as to conceal our foreigner status. I don’t know if I looked uncomfortable, but I definitely felt it. The random and untimely stomach ache didn’t help the situation. Once 10.30 rolled around, we entered the classroom and found 2 seats comfortably far away from the front of the class. When the teacher came in, she asked us to introduce ourselves. Damn. We would have to talk. I tried my best not to be scared: "Je m’appelle Aurora. Je suis une etudiante des Etats-Unis. J’ai decide de suivre ce cours parce que j’aime bien les langues et je voulais essayer un cours de linguistique.” (We had to explain why we wanted to take the class.) Phew. Done. The rest of 1.5 hour class passed relatively painlessly (aside from in my stomach…), and the professor spoke very clearly and tended to repeat herself, so it wasn’t difficult to take notes and understand. All in all, first class = success!

My other class, which meets on Thursday, was a different story. The course is called “Le mentir vrai” and studies 5 French literary works from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. I’m still not exactly sure about what the title of the course refers to, but it’s something about lies, the truth, illusions, pretending, etc. The class was 3 hours long and quite painful to sit though due to the fact that I didn’t understand a whole lot about what the teacher was saying. It’s not that the words were unfamiliar (for the most part I was able to recognize and even write down each sentence exactly as she said it), it’s that the ideas were rather complex and I had never heard of them before. Something about Aristotle and limitation? Don’t really know. Hopefully as time goes on, these lectures will make more sense. In any case, it’s comforting to know that this professor has a good amount of experience with foreign students, and it doesn’t seem like she has the habit of failing them.

Other stuff that's been going on:

-Had my first test at Sweet Briar in my EU class. It went pretty well.

-Worked on reforming my circadian rhythm, with some success.

-Visited Parc des Buttes Chaumont, a huge park (especially for Paris standards) with lots of beautiful natural things: waterfalls, cliffs, foliage, etc. And there was a cool bridge..!

-Bought books for class at Gilbert Jeune

-AirFrance finally got their act together, and I was able to change my return flight to December 23! This means I will be in Finland from Dec. 17-22. :)

This past weekend, I left Paris for the first time to go to Normandy with Sweet Briar. The entire trip was planned and paid for by SBC, which was extremely nice and convenient. We met at Gare St. Lazare at 8.30 am on Saturday to take the train to Normandy. There were 30 of us, including 2 chaperones from the program (one of them is Mme Gree, kind of a baller). After a 2.5 hour train ride, we took a bus straight to our first tourist spot: the Tapestry of Bayeux, which is an extremely ridiculously long tapestry that recounts the Battle of Hastings of 1066. I'm not a huge history buff, especially not of Medieval History, so to me it was kind of boring. But I guess cool to see something famous? After the visit, we ate a typical Normandy lunch: galettes (basically cornmeal crepes) at a small cafe. Then we boarded the bus again, and drove to the American Cemetary at Omaha Beach, the site of the D-day landings. It was a very somber place, and the mood was set by the somewhat ominous/freezing weather. Seeing the ocean was nice, although kind of bizarre--we have been landlocked for quite some time now, and it was weird to be on a cold beach. Then the actual cemetary...it was striking. There were so many white crosses lined up in rows and rows that seemed absolutely endless. Hearing a statistic of deaths has such little effect when compared to that of seeing an actual physical representation of the amount of people that died in WW2.

After that, our somber/war-themed day continued, as we took the bus to our next location: Pont du Hoc, where German bunkers were bombed and the terrain is marked by massive ditches created by the bombs. It was unsettling to be there, to see what that war did to the earth, and to imagine what it once did to the people who were there during the war. After Pont du Hoc, we boarded the bus again to drive to our hotel near Mont St. Michel. There, we ate a wonderful (and fully paid) 3-course dinner and talked amongst ourselves. After that, Laura and I both took baths in the glorious bathtub in our hotel room (we don't have a tub at our homestay), and a group of kids went out to find some nightlife. Unfortunately, the town was limited to one main street with 2 bars, neither of which was worth stepping into. Thus, they returned 10 minutes after leaving, disappointed by their search. We talked/watched soccer on TV in our room for a few hours, then all went to bed rather exhausted.

Next morning, we got up early for a wonderful and full breakfast of croissants, bread, cereal, yogurt, poundcake, juice, coffee, tea, etc. It was the best breakfast I have had since being in Paris (breakfast at my homestay is usually cereal, if anything). After that, we got on the bus and drove to Mont St. Michel, a monastery which looks more like a castle and sits atop a mountain. The monastery itself was quite pretty, with its gothic architecture and incredible views. Afterwards, we walked around in the town a bit and visited different tourist shops. Some of the stores had adorable anchor-themed clothing for little kids, which made me think of DG, obviously. Our next destination was St. Malo, and after a 2-hour bus ride we arrived, got off the bus, and I looked out and saw a big anchor. The only anchor I have seen in France--I knew I had to take a picture. Little did I know that anchors would be EVERYWHERE in St. Malo--on bars, restaurants, stores, real anchors, in gift shops, on clothing, etc. It was so exciting! Unfortunately, our first priority was to find lunch, not to hunt for anchors. So we went to a restaurant where a few of our group ordered Moules-Frites (mussels and fries), while I opted for the safer choice of a ham & cheese galette. After that, we had a tour of a "pirate house," which wasn't really a pirate house, but a house that belonged to some dude who was committing tax evasion. It was still a pretty cool house, though. After that, I only had 30 minutes to hunt for anchors before we had to leave! I went with a few friends to some of the gift shops, but most of the things they were selling weren't anything practical or fun. So sadly, I left St. Malo empty-handed, without any anchors. But I did take some pictures of all the wonderful anchors that I saw while there. :) After St. Malo, we went to the train station and took the train back to Paris. It was a great weekend, even though it felt like we were very rushed the whole time. It was nice to be away from Paris for a few days and see a different side of France.