La Vie Etudiante

In an effort to be a little more regular about blog updating, here's a quick recap:

TUESDAY

I didn’t have any class today, so I woke up around 8:30, had some breakfast and a leisurely morning, and left around 10:30 for IES to meet Maddy for lunch in between her classes. It was threatening rain all morning, so we ended up dashing to a boulangerie/patisserie a block away from school for a salmon and avocado sandwich, then ate them in the IES kitchen with some other people. From now on, I’m going to stop by Monoprix for lunch or just go to the RU, as it is so much cheaper than buying lunch every day! Some girls bought or made salads and keep yogurts in the fridge, which is such a good idea. (I feel like I’m always mentioning how expensive everything is, but seeing prices in Euros every day constantly reminds me of how poor the dollar has been lately—which is not good!)

While Maddy was in class, Clare, Lauren, and I walked over to Place Bouffay (across the tramway) for Clare to grab lunch, and then I finished my sandwich with the two of them. It was nice to have no obligations and just walk around and explore a little bit. While they were all in class, I took a good two hours to figure out my scheduling and catch up on correspondence. After class, the four of us headed toward the fac (university) but happened across a used-book sale about the size of a large Farmer’s Market near the tram station and ended up browsing for a good 30 minutes. These novels were all in French (which sounds stupidly obvious, but you try finding French books in the US… not quite as easy!) and were only 1 Euro each, so I bought Les Stances à Sophie by Christiane Rochefort, as I read another of her novels (Les Petits Enfants du Siècle) this past Spring.  It turns out, this book sale is every Tuesday, so I plan on reading lots and stocking up, if I can.

Afterwards, we took the tram up to sign up for SUAPS (intramural sports that include things like scuba, 10 kinds of dance, kayaking, and circus). IES really wants us to sign up, and I’m still on the fence about it, as there’s not a ton that works with my schedule that interests me, though I know it’s the best way to meet people. The SUAPS office happened to be closed anyway, so we took the tram back home to downtown and I have another day to decide what I want to do. We decided to go to a café called NOOPS, mainly just because the name sounded ridiculous, and ended up getting coffees and free biscuits around 5:30pm. Because the buses were a little slow, I got back around 6:45/7pm, just in time for my little sisters to read me poems, give me colored pictures, play with my iPod (their favorite thing to do) and jump on the trampoline (all of the four younger ones and me) before dinner at 8pm. Afterwards, I watched Star Wars I with three of the kids before heading to bed. Just another pretty average day!

WEDNESDAY

I have Histoire d'Art and Commerce & Mondialisation back-to-back from 10:45 until 1:30, so after class, I took a walk to Monoprix in the rain to 1) buy an umbrella and 2) buy my famished self some lunch-- I'm not used to only two tartines for breakfast! After paying the equivalent of $30 for the cheapest umbrella I could find, I only spent 14 E on lunch fixings for the next couple days-- couscous/tabbouleh, bread, salami, cheese, yogurt, and pudding. It sort of hits the food groups! After a cozy lunch away from the rain with some other students, I spent my next four free hours hanging out in the lounge, reading Madame Figaro (a good magazine here), and chatting with friends before I had Ecrivains Français until 6:45pm, then it was home for dinner! I was absolutely exhausted for whatever reason, so after a little studying, I ended up sleeping from 10:30 until 8am. That's the one thing I've noticed about being here: I'm tired all the time. I go into food comas after lunch (which is the exact reason I have zero afternoon classes-- it's nice to just sit in the lounge and write or relax) and am sleepy by 10pm. I know it takes a lot of brainpower to function in a different language, but I think the fact that I walk way more and climb four times as many stairs here has something to do with it as well!

THURSDAY

Today I had my first class à la fac ("fac" is short for faculté, which means university), which was my Psychologie Cognitive class. Let me explain how French classes are organized... they're NOT. I left my house at 9am for the bus-tram combo and got to the fac in the pouring rain by 9:30 or so. I wasn't sure what building my class was in; I only remembered that it was in Amphi C (amphithéatre, aka lecture hall) and that there were amphis in one of the buildings we toured with IES. I headed towards that one (the building of arts and letters) and found the right room, but after hearing other students' horror stories about last-minute room changes, I went to find the boards that list classes and room numbers, which I knew were in another building, and couldn't remember which. After a good 20 minutes of silent panicking and waiting outside amphi C, I looked on a sign posted on the wall (that I had previously looked at, but misread) and found that my class was in the same hall, after all. Whew. I found a seat in this huge (maybe 300-seat... bigger than Daly Science) hall and waited for class to start. First of all, students don't mind talking during class here. They don't do it loudly, so I don't find it disrespectful (because people do that at home too), but it would have been nicer had the professor not been talking at conversational volume!! He would be at the microphone when seated, then get up to write something on the board, and the volume of his voice barely changed. The material itself was beyond boring, as it is a course for L1 students (freshmen) and I didn't learn any new material, but I did manage to take a couple pages of notes, which is necessary because there are neither book lists nor syllabi at the university! After my two hours were up, I met up with Maddy and Lauren, who both happen to take classes at the fac Thursdays as well, for some lunch at the RU (restaurant universitaire) before heading back to IES once again to read/stay warm and dry/ relax before Commerce & Mondialisation. I got home a little earlier than usual, which meant I was greeted by coloriages (colored pictures) from the little girls upon arrival, then played with them in my room until dinner, and watched Shakespeare in Love (in French with French subtitles... I'm not ready to go without them just yet) until now. Though I don't have class tomorrow, I do have a packed day ahead-- lots of errand-running and making sure I'm prepared for the big one: the Biopharmacologie class I decided to take at the fac, which is on Monday. It will be in a different building and most likely a different area of campus (and possibly a different tram stop), so I'm going to head to the university tomorrow to try to avoid as much Monday-morning confusion as possible. We'll see how that goes.

On the whole, I'm loving it here. I feel like I've been here way longer than two weeks; I don't feel a rush to hurry up and get everything in before I leave (like traveling, sightseeing, etc.) because I just kind of feel like I'm here to be here and I don't have a countdown until I leave. As such, I haven't booked a single trip. I want to make it to London and Paris, and somewhere in Italy would be great, but that's only after I feel like I know Nantes well enough, and I'm just barely getting to that point; I don't want to leave my new home to go be a tourist elsewhere quite yet. The only thing bothering me (which has bothered me since day one) is my lack of spoken French. I had to drop my optional grammar class because it conflicted with Pharmacology, but I need the practice badly, and I'm hoping that this weekend (and especially next week) I can finally get over the English-first-French-second hump and start to actually express my opinions!