French classes and scuba masks
My first day of real french university classes is officially over. It wasn't too bad. Very different from Dickinson classes, in more ways than the obvious language one, but juuuust fine nonetheless.
My first class was international economy, which was really boring and I don't think I'm going to end up taking it for real. But it was definitely an experience because about 10 minutes into the class, a group of about 6 or 7 girls came in, and at first I didn't notice anything odd, but then a girl came in wearing a scuba mask, and then I realized that all the other girls we wearing bathing suits over their clothes, and hats, and carrying towels and stuff. So they kind of parade around the room a little bit, and then they come up to where the professor is sitting giving his lecture into a microphone (there are actually two rooms for this class, and one only has a loudspeaker, not the real professor....crazy!) and one of the girls spreads her towel out onto the professor's desk and lays down, while the other (scuba mask girl) grabs the microphone! She starts speaking really fast french, which I couldn't catch any of, and then everyone is laughing, and then she starts doing this weird thing with her hands behind her head, and she's like "everyone do it, yeahhh, even you professor!" and everyone starts doing it, including the professor! Annie and I were just like "whooooaaaaa, what is going on?" And then the girls thanked the professor and proceeded out, and the professor just smiled and continued his lecture. We asked the girl next to us what was going on, and what we gathered was that it was some sort of freshmen hazing thing...? It was absolutely hilarious. And we had heard all this stuff from our professors at the Dickinson Center about french professors being very strict, and not compassionate, and don't even try to make friends with them, don't eat in class or leave in the middle, etc, etc. So this whole distruption made me feel a little more at ease that a scary french professor wasn't going to eat me or something. Too bad I'm not taking that class, maybe it's that exciting all the time....?
The next classes were Cultural Studies and Theory of Communication, which are back to back in the same auditorium, with the same professor, who is fairly young, and seems pretty cool. And he also speaks very clearly and pauses a lot with a lot of "ummmm", which gives me time to catch up and figure out what he's talking about! And the Cultural Studies class is actually a seminar, because these classes are both "senior" classes (except the IEP, institute of political science, and I guess the French university system in general is crazy and has "1st year, 2nd year, 4th year". I'm like, where did the 3rd year go?), so we get to do group work the whole time, which will be a lot of work, but I think I'll like it. It'll be a break from the other lecture classes, and I'll get to meet some REAL french people! I'm just worried that I will be that dumb foreign girl who has nothing to contribute to the group, but hopefully they'll be understanding! And I'm from America, that's gotta give me some extra points or something in the coolness rating, right? All the French people like to wear American clothes, listen to American music, and watch American movies and TV shows, so they should like me. I can talk at length about all of those things. ;-)
Then before dinner Annie and I killed some time, which isn't odd because French people eat so late we feel incredibly conspicuous going into a restaurant at like, 6:30 for dinner. For the French, that's still happy hour. And in our random wanderings before dinner, we discovered the church of the Jacobins, which we had heard about but never really knew where it was. Well, turns out........it's amazing! It's right in the middle of the city, but kind of more towards the Garonne river, which we don't really go to that often, and it's not really a church anymore, but a museum displaying all these old churchy things, like chalices and stuff, and then also they have a concert series there called "Le piano aux Jacobins", which they were setting up for tonight while we were wandering around. It was a really amazing building, and I would have liked to see a concert, but we weren't really sure if it was free or you needed tickets or what, and at one point when we were walking around in the garden where the concert was being held (cloister? garden? not really sure), a woman came over and was like "blah blah blah something something leave soon!" so we took that as a cue to skeedaddle. Hahaah, I just said skeedaddle. And then we had dinner at a cheap restaurant, and I like cheap good food, so everything was great.
In other news, I'm trying to get my Ofoto website to work so there can be more pictures to look at, but it's being kind of dumb and making everyone sign in. Sooo, if you want to sign in, please look! And until then, I'll try to get that fixed. Now tomorrow will be scary because Annie and I are....wait for it.....going to classes separately. This should be interesting. ;-)
My first class was international economy, which was really boring and I don't think I'm going to end up taking it for real. But it was definitely an experience because about 10 minutes into the class, a group of about 6 or 7 girls came in, and at first I didn't notice anything odd, but then a girl came in wearing a scuba mask, and then I realized that all the other girls we wearing bathing suits over their clothes, and hats, and carrying towels and stuff. So they kind of parade around the room a little bit, and then they come up to where the professor is sitting giving his lecture into a microphone (there are actually two rooms for this class, and one only has a loudspeaker, not the real professor....crazy!) and one of the girls spreads her towel out onto the professor's desk and lays down, while the other (scuba mask girl) grabs the microphone! She starts speaking really fast french, which I couldn't catch any of, and then everyone is laughing, and then she starts doing this weird thing with her hands behind her head, and she's like "everyone do it, yeahhh, even you professor!" and everyone starts doing it, including the professor! Annie and I were just like "whooooaaaaa, what is going on?" And then the girls thanked the professor and proceeded out, and the professor just smiled and continued his lecture. We asked the girl next to us what was going on, and what we gathered was that it was some sort of freshmen hazing thing...? It was absolutely hilarious. And we had heard all this stuff from our professors at the Dickinson Center about french professors being very strict, and not compassionate, and don't even try to make friends with them, don't eat in class or leave in the middle, etc, etc. So this whole distruption made me feel a little more at ease that a scary french professor wasn't going to eat me or something. Too bad I'm not taking that class, maybe it's that exciting all the time....?
The next classes were Cultural Studies and Theory of Communication, which are back to back in the same auditorium, with the same professor, who is fairly young, and seems pretty cool. And he also speaks very clearly and pauses a lot with a lot of "ummmm", which gives me time to catch up and figure out what he's talking about! And the Cultural Studies class is actually a seminar, because these classes are both "senior" classes (except the IEP, institute of political science, and I guess the French university system in general is crazy and has "1st year, 2nd year, 4th year". I'm like, where did the 3rd year go?), so we get to do group work the whole time, which will be a lot of work, but I think I'll like it. It'll be a break from the other lecture classes, and I'll get to meet some REAL french people! I'm just worried that I will be that dumb foreign girl who has nothing to contribute to the group, but hopefully they'll be understanding! And I'm from America, that's gotta give me some extra points or something in the coolness rating, right? All the French people like to wear American clothes, listen to American music, and watch American movies and TV shows, so they should like me. I can talk at length about all of those things. ;-)
Then before dinner Annie and I killed some time, which isn't odd because French people eat so late we feel incredibly conspicuous going into a restaurant at like, 6:30 for dinner. For the French, that's still happy hour. And in our random wanderings before dinner, we discovered the church of the Jacobins, which we had heard about but never really knew where it was. Well, turns out........it's amazing! It's right in the middle of the city, but kind of more towards the Garonne river, which we don't really go to that often, and it's not really a church anymore, but a museum displaying all these old churchy things, like chalices and stuff, and then also they have a concert series there called "Le piano aux Jacobins", which they were setting up for tonight while we were wandering around. It was a really amazing building, and I would have liked to see a concert, but we weren't really sure if it was free or you needed tickets or what, and at one point when we were walking around in the garden where the concert was being held (cloister? garden? not really sure), a woman came over and was like "blah blah blah something something leave soon!" so we took that as a cue to skeedaddle. Hahaah, I just said skeedaddle. And then we had dinner at a cheap restaurant, and I like cheap good food, so everything was great.
In other news, I'm trying to get my Ofoto website to work so there can be more pictures to look at, but it's being kind of dumb and making everyone sign in. Sooo, if you want to sign in, please look! And until then, I'll try to get that fixed. Now tomorrow will be scary because Annie and I are....wait for it.....going to classes separately. This should be interesting. ;-)
posted by Caitlin @ 9:56 PM
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