Sorry for the delay; what with classes starting this week I have been all over the place! I started classes on Monday, and I am glad to say that I am finished for the week! (aka no classes on Fridays!) Classes so far seem interesting and within my abilities, if challenging, although it is tricky to navigate a system where most classes are carrying over from first semester, so everyone has already read the book, or the syllabus was handed out in september and hasn't been heard of since. I haven't yet been to my spanish class (because of a slight mix up in which my brain changed 15h-17h to 5-7 pm...I knew that would happen to me at some point)...Luckily, I was able to meet the teacher and talk to her to make sure that class wouldn't be too hard for me. Switching that quickly directly from french to spanish with no english in between was a little jarring, and I had to literally bite me tongue to keep from dropping certain french words in with the spanish! Class should be interesting, needless to say, but I feel like switching back and forth will keep me on my toes :)
Today after caving and picking out a longchamps bag (simply the best bag to fit my laptop, notebooks, etc that doesn't look totally crappy-I should have done as the french students in all of my classes and gotten a little notebook, instead of having my macbook...oh well...), I went to the Louvre with a few friends, where we were pleasantly surprised to find that university students (at least "french" universtiy students" haha) get in for free! We hope this carries over to many of the other major museums too :) We picked one wing (French/Italian Renaissance wing), based on what we talked about in our first Modern Art History "TD", and were able to recognize a lot of the paintings and artists that we had talked about in class this morning (and when I say talked about, I mean the teacher played a slideshow and quizzed the students at random on artist, title, location, dates, etc. of paintings they had studied in the fall..unfortunately we hadn't introduced ourselves as study abroad students before the class, so when he called on any of us, it was kind of awkward/we mostly failed to correctly i.d. haha) Luckily he was nicely quizzing everyone, not meanly quizzing everyone!
After the Louvre, I stopped off at the Gare de Lyon to try to get a 12-25 pass, which discounts all train tickets in France. After stopping to ask where I could buy one at approximately five different "guichets", I arrived at a huge line of about 200 people waiting to buy tickets...it would appear that they don't have a separate location to just buy this discount pass, so I decided I will try to buy it online again before waiting in a horrendous line!
Can't wait to be taken to an "american cake shop", as my british friend calls it, tomorrow afternoon :) (did I mention I don't have class on Fridays?)
A bientot! I promise to try to post more frequently in the future!!
Gillian
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