So today I thought I would tell you a little bit about school. I've realized that you have no idea what I am studying (aside from France) and what I am learning. It is a big part of my life here.
My first class on Monday and Tuesday is Grammaire (or grammar) with the program director, Christophe. It is a continuation of what I have been taking at school. We use the same book. We are reading three plays; Marius, Cesar, and Fanny (a trilogy). That class is not too hard, and I actually know what I am being graded upon.
The next class that I take, l'histoire (or history) is on Tuesday and Friday mornings with Monsieur Boura. He is the nicest man and he is very intelligent and enthusiastic. I feel bad because he knows so much about the topics, but can not explain much about them because he had to "dumb-down" the class to our level. In history, we look at a song and translate it. Then, we see where the song came from and the history behind it. For example, the first two weeks we learned about Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) and la Guerre de Cent Ans (the 100 years war). This week we started learning about the French Revolution. He tries to focus a bit on Avignon, too. It is interesting, but also boring at times. All my classes are two hours long, and when you get hungry and all you hear is French, you tend to zone out. I have no idea how I am being graded in history, as the French do not like to give out syllabuses. I just participate and ask questions as much as possible and do my homework.
Another class that I always have at the end of the day on Tuesday (6 hours of class, 8 hours at school) is le litterature (literature) with Monsieur Bory. He is very cute and people have told me that whenever they look at me in class, I have a glazed look and I am staring at him smiling. Sadly, today I learned that he is married with 3 kids. C'est dommage! (darnit) In this class we have two separate subjects. On Tuesdays we learn about French authors in general. It is very difficult, and I often zone out. It is like in depth English literature, but in French! On Fridays, we focus on Provencal literature (the area in which I am studying). It is almost the same. In this class, we will be doing two compositions on the literature and two 20-minute oral presentations. That's right, 20 minutes in French, explaining literature. I'd like to see me do that in English!
My next class in one class, but it is split between two teachers on Thursday. The first part of the class is kind of like grammar and writing, I guess. We write poems. It is a lot of fun. I feel like I am in second grade again. We made acrostic poems. This was mine:
S péciale (special)
H onnête (honest)
A imable (amiable)
W (ise) (sage) ---------------> "w" does not really exist in French. The only words with w's
came from the English language. Therefore I used an Eng word.
N erveuse (nervous)
A musante (amusing/funny)
I like this class the most out of them all because the professor treats us like little kids. The only bad part is that she smells un peu (a little).
The next part of this class is oral. I do not like this class. AT ALL. The professor is supposedly my neighbor somewhere around here. Half our grade is a 20 minute presentation and half our grade is a final. For MY project with my friend Melissa, we have to go out, record French people our age talking, write it down, and then correct their grammar. Other people are recording sports casts, or talking to politicians, or analyzing music. The basic point of this class is to examine how French people talk, and how it is grammatically incorrect, kind of like slang. The only problem is, we don't know slang French. Hmph. It is funny though because she teaches some of it and always tells Rachel and I never to use it in front of our host mom because she speaks very properly. And it is true. All the kids here say "ouyais" (pronounced "way") instead of "oui" (pronounced "wee") because it is like saying "yeah" instead of "yes." But at home we get in trouble if we say that.
So those are the classes I take all week. We do not have class on Wednesday, unless we have Monday or Friday off. Basically we have 4 days of class per week. The only bad part is that the lunch breaks are 2-4 hours long. So, for example, on Thursday I only have 4 hours of class, but I also have a 4 hour break, so I am at school for 8 hours. It takes me a half hour to walk home so it would be pointless for me to go back. School is 2 miles from my house and 4 miles a day is more than enough. However, sometimes we do go shopping and eat and tan and use the Internet during this time.
And one last thing. The University is still on strike. It has been for 3 months now. This is a HUGE problem in France. From what I understand, President Sarkozy just made a law that says that college students now have to pay for school. Before, school was free for students. All you had to do was pass the extremely difficult BAC (like a super hard SAT) and you could go to school for free. Well, the French being the French, decided that they would not put up with the bullshit and are striking. However, the students will still have to take their finals at the end of the semester even though they have no learned the material. Last week they went to school for one day to catch up on what was going on. My thoughts are, if it is free for them, why don't they just drop out for the semester and go back to school when the strike is solved? It is very complicated, but this is what I understand of it from my French professors.
Hope I have not bored you too much! Just wanted to show you that I am learning a lot =)
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