Miscellaneous

(I'm making a separate post because my school post is already too long.)

School

• I take the city bus to school. It's 10 minutes on foot from my house to the gare, 10 minutes en bus, and 4 or 5 to get to my classroom.
• There are no lockers, so I have to carry everything around with me.

What People Wear

• Girls: jeans and sweaters. Or some girls wear actual put-together outfits, but that seems like entirely too much work at 7 am. About half have real backpacks (Eastpak) and the other half have big purse-things.
• Boys: jeans and sweaters or sweatshirts. Or some boys wear actual put-together outfits, but that seems like entirely too much work at 7 am. Backpacks, usually Eastpak.

What People Eat

• The chocolate pudding is SO good.
• My host parents have a garden so we eat some fresh vegetables.
• Bread, bread, bread. All the time.
• It's hard to find a cereal that's not sugary/chocolate-flavored (I only like un-sweet cereal), so I eat Special K Nature, which does not have a picture of the cereal on the box. Instead there's a sketch of a woman's waist. And on the back there's a diet plan. Ah, well.

Any questions?

School

As promised:

So Monday from 8 to 10 I have TPE, which is a small group research project. Since I'm in S, I have to do someting involving Bio and math. Fantastic... My group still hasn't picked a topic.

Then I have History/Geography/Civics (1 hour on B weeks). At the moment it's history. The industrial revolution as it relates to France. The teacher (M. Bru) has been really helpful and understanding. He gave me his email adress in case I have questions.

11-12 is Spanish (level IV). I've never taken Spanish, so I have no idea what to do in that class. At least it's only 2 hours a week.

12 to 1:30 every day is lunch. Usually it's a cold entrée (starter) and meat with a vegetable or rice for the main course. Then fruit or yogurt for dessert. And of course lots of baguette (it's incredible how much bread some of the boys consume). The food is served family style at a table of 6 people. You don't have a choice of food and if you want to eat with someone you have to go into the cafeteria with them because the tables fill up in order. Usually the food is okay, except on Fridays. They always serve fish, for the Catholics, I guess. Whoever thought it was a good idea not to eat meat on Fridays never had to eat institutional fish.

Then I have 2 hours of gym. Right now we're studying badminton, which is harder than it looks, especially since everyone else already knows how to play. Silly Europeans :).

Then 2 hours of Latin. I like that class because I can answer questions (ABLATIVE becomes ABLATIF. Easy peasy.)

Tuesday
I start school at 9 with an hour of math. The teacher is so bad. He's always making mistakes in his examples. Plus the way he explains things (the French way?) is unnecessarily complicated. Way more confusing language than there needs to be. Also, in the US we do word problems and practical applications and stuff. Here? Prove whether the product of two odd functions is odd or even. Which I can do, sort of, but it's hard.

10-12 is Bio. The teacher is really nice but she talks really fast and we're supposed to copy down almost everything she says. I have no chance. I took a Bio test yesterday. It was essentially a timed essay on how the body regulates its gycemic level. I gave it a try. We'll see whether she's going to be generous with me.

Lunch.

1 hour off.

1 hr of English! The teacher is British. It's lovely speaking a language fluently. Plus the French accent in English is trop mignon.

1 hr of French. This class could potentially be really interesting or really, really boring. Not sure yet.

1 hr of Latin.

Wednesday

Math 8-9.

Physics and Chem (combined) from 9 to 10. I took my first Physics test today. I didn't get most of the answers I was supposed to get, but, hey, neither did the French kids. So we failed as one.

10-11 is French class, and then I have an hour of administrative stuff/advisory/assembly, but only sometimes...Today I didn't, so I waited for an hour and then ate lunch in the cafeteria with my classmate Remy. (Most kids go home since there's no class after lunch, but not me.)

Thursday
Math, Spanish, 2 hours of French, Lunch, 1 hour of Physique-Chimie, and then another hour of P-C on an A week or History on a B week.

Friday
English, 2 hrs of History, 1 hr of math, lunch.

Then I have 2 hours of Bio Lab (blah) and 2 hours of Physique-Chimie Lab (more interesting. M. Ly is cool.).

Saturday (I know, right? The week is supposed to be over.)
Math from 9 to 10. I used to have Physique-Chimie but the teacher agreed to move it to Thursday. And we're working on rescheduling the math class.

John Maynard Keynes

So I'm on the computer doing research for history class. We have to research Keynes and how he saved America during the Great Depression by giving us the Heavenly Manna of Socialism.

The funny part is that only the French websites say that. American websites are grumpy about him because he was Out To Destroy Capitalism.

I love cultural differences.

Sorry for not posting...

...but you'll have to wait longer still for a real post. This keyboard is hard to use and I have to keep deleting things. And seriously? Who thought it was a good idea to make people hit the shift key to type a period?

But really I am in a good mood. Homesickness was overwhelming for the first few days, but now I feel like I fit in.

A boy even invited me to hang out with his friends outside of school sometime, BUT Nelly and Daniel are kind of paranoid and they want to meet my potential friends before I go anywhere with them. Grr. But it's not good, it's not bad, it's just different.

School's not as hard as I expected, actually. More on that soon. Soon-ish, anyway.

You must be so excited.

People keep telling me that I'm excited. Usually I just agree (it's easier), but I'm really not excited.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm going. But I'm not excited. How do I explain this?

Ah, a simile. Going on exchange is like waking up alive tomorrow. I like being alive, but generally, if someone said to you, "You must be so excited to wake up alive tomorrow," you would disagree. People are happy to be alive. Grateful, if they're the religious sort. But it is very hard to muster genuine excitement for something that seems so inevitable.

I hope that made sense.

Until next time, faithful readers,
Lucie

Kudos to a Fellow Blogger

This post is dedicated to [bt], whose emotions (as expressed in her blog) almost always match mine with frightening accuracy. As a writer, she has a contagious joie de vivre, and the blog itself has a certain je ne sais quoi. Here's the link: http://btenfrance.blogspot.com/. If you haven't found her blog already, now would be a good time to start following it.

An aside: One post a month, while good for my self control, is not so good for maintaining an accurate record. So I'm going to write when I darn well want to.

Research on the Behavioral Tendencies of the French People

I've finished my R.B.T.F.P. (See title.) Now, for the benefit of you, the reader, I shall ruminate on the reference texts used.

(From most useful to least)

1. Talk to the Snail: Ten Commandments for Understanding the French by Stephen Clarke ~ It was relevant. It was insightful. It was funny. It was the only book I needed to read. How to deal with the French in addition to How to understand them.
2. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow ~ More scientific. Less practical. But the points were clear and logical without being obvious.
3. Culture Shock! France: A Guide to Customs and Etiquette by Sally Taylor ~ Advice was similar to #1, but writing was much less accessible. Felt dated.
4. The French by Theodore Zeldin ~ Very scholarly. More in-depth. (Much to my embarrassment, I haven't gotten around to finishing it.)
5. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle ~ Memoir. Inspiring--it's possible to get along quite well in France
6. French by Heart: An American Family's Adventures in La Belle France by Rebecca Ramsey ~ Memoir. Drivel.
7. The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us--and Why the Feeling is Mutual by Richard Chesnoff ~ As an American, I am embarrassed. Nationalistic propaganda. Good for a laugh if you can manage not to take him seriously.

Interesting tidbit: British books were more helpful than American books. 1 is British, 7 is American. 1' s strategy for dealing with the French is be polite and admit you're wrong. Effective? Yes. 7's strategy includes swearing at the French person whose help you desire (sample words included in the book). Effective? No, but "at least you'll have the last word." Oh my. I love my country, really I do, but sometimes I wonder about the people in it.