The End of Week #2

Bonjour everyone!  Woohoo!  It's the end of week 2 (and a few days hehe)!  Where to start, where to start?  Why not from the beginning?

This week has been a lot of fun, to say the very least.  We celebrated Bastille Day here, which is like the French version of the 4th of July.  It commemorates the storming of the Bastille (a prison that was holding French revolutionaries), and marked the kickoff of the French Revolution.  All throughout the day, we participated in different activities to celebrate and learn about Bastille Day.

We made French accessories (dubbed "French touches" by the staff here):

I was pretty excited about my finished crafts...if you can't tell.

Woohoo, we're gettin' patriotic up in here!

Later in the day, we had a big barbecue and a quick dance party where the staff put on quite a show.  Shortly afterwards, with our bellies full and our muscles warm, we left for the fireworks.  We got a pretty good spot at the fireworks, and despite the constant smell of cigarette smoke, it was a great show.  Check out some of my best pics:

(By the way, the stereotype is true: the French really like their cigarettes.  Whenever you go into town, you can smell cigarette smoke almost anywhere.)

I have been eating plenty of good food here.  I attended a dégustation (food tasting) that featured French favorites as well as a few regional specialties.  Just today, I visited a fromagerie with my culture and cuisine class.  "Fromage" is the French word for cheese, and we had the opportunity to sample plenty of it while we were there.  I don't think I've ever seen so much cheese in one place:

There were several good cheeses, but my favorite?  Le perail.  Best served with bread, it had a great flavor and texture and I felt very sophisticated and French-y eating it.  I unashamedly probably ate the majority of the wheel of perail.  'Twas a relatively small wheel, but still. :)

There's lots to see and do here, so among other things, I have visited the Montpellier botanical gardens...

...visited a French TV station...

...enjoyed a beautiful opera...

...and typed a document with a French keyboard...

...and that is a much more difficult task than you might think. :)

My comprehension has gotten much better, and I feel more at ease with the French language now, which is incredibly exciting.  I'm still having a hard time expressing my thoughts effectively, though.  An intelligent French thought is much more easily writtten than it is spoken.  I still have a long way to go, but I'm making progress, and progress is a great thing.  

It's now 1:00 in the morninghere, and we have an excursion to the city of Avignon tomorrow, so I should probably go to sleep now.  I hope you all enjoyed this peek into my life this past week.  It's an exciting life indeed. :)  À tout à l'heure!  Until next time!

Sincerely,

A Fromage-Eating, Accessory-Making, Partially Bilingual Self-Proclaimed Nerd

End of Week #1 (one day late)

Bonjour everyone!  So, yesterday marked the end of my first week here in France.  I said I would try to get a post out at the end of every week, so I'm one day late, but I'm still doing it!

This week has been crazy, to say the least.  Not necessarily crazy in a bad way, but definitely crazy, and I'll tell you why.

1.) I am from Detroit, also known as the Motor City.  With that being said, I am used to lots of cars everywhere, wide streets, and driving everywhere that I need to go.  In France, it is the exact opposite.  There are significantly less cars, the main streets aren't much wider than your average American side street (don't even get me started on the side streets here!), and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, walks wherever they need to go.  Just look at the streets:

No wonder there are so few people overweight here!  I have never walked so much in my life.  My feet hurt on a continual basis, but I love the atmosphere and being able to go out and explore the city on foot.

2.) It is incredibly hot here.  I've never been in a place where it's so faithfully, constantly hot.  Granted, the weather is beautiful and exactly how you would imagine the south of France to be, but wow, it's hot.  It has only rained once the entire week, and the sky was completely cloudless for 4 straight days.  I can't remember the last time I sweated this regularly, but I love the sunny weather, and the fact that it's always a great time to go outside.

3.) The French language ain't no joke.  The 100% immersion aspect of the program brought me to the rude awakening that I didn't know as much French as I thought I did.  I mean, I knew I wasn't going to be the best by a long shot, and I knew I was going to struggle when I arrived here, but did I know it would be this bad?  No, I did not.  Would I have ever guessed it would be this much of a challenge?  Never in a million years.  Even things as simple as ordering at a restaurant or talking with newfound friends become brain-probing challenges and tests of levelheadedness.  I quickly realized that my biggest challenge is not reading or writing or even speaking, but comprehending.  At first, it was even difficult to understand my peers, so you can imagine how hard it was to understand the teaching/administrative staff and the natives!  It's hasn't been anywhere near easy, and tears of frustration have been shed, but I'm learning.  I'm getting better and understanding more every day.  I just have to be patient.

Hopefully, this whole post didn't sound like one big complaint.  That wasn't my goal.  Sure, there are things I could complain about, but why should I?  I'm fulfilling life dreams, learning a beautiful language in a beautiful city, and I'm marching my way (slowly but surely) towards bilingualdom.  It's exciting stuff.  Here's just a few photos for your viewing pleasure:

 

That's all for now.  I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it, and hopefully, next week's blog will be even better.  Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

An Achy, Tired, Learning, and Growing Self-Proclaimed Nerd

The end of Day 2

Well, it's the end, folks.  Er, the end of a long second day, that is.  Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

I boarded my first plane from Detroit to Paris just fine.  The plane ride was long but smooth, and I was seated next to a very mumbly but nice, middle-aged man named Bobby.  He enlightened me with his own travel stories and helped me with my carry-on because I'm short and it was hard to reach it. :)  I got about 3 hours of sleep on the plane.  Thank the Lord, that plane ride was uneventful.  It was when I arrived in Paris that things got interesting.

Paris-Charles de Gaulle is a huge airport. I ended up getting lost for about an hour while being very un-confident in my Français.  After asking 5 different information desks for help and almost breaking down in tears in the middle of the airport, I finally reached my gate with about 20 minutes to spare.  After that, it was pretty smooth sailing down to Montpellier.

The first day was mostly orientation, but it was all <<en Français>>, which made it much harder.  I met my roommate, and we have been getting along well so far.  I got mostly unpacked and got my first solid amount of sleep in about 36 hours.  It was glorious. :)

Today was the first day of classes, and it was interesting, to say the least.  Everyone in the program is supposed to speak French 100% of the time, and both of my classes are taught in French.  My first class is La France au quotidien (Everyday French).  Mon professeur (my teacher) is very nice, but it can get pretty hard to understand all that she says.  My listening comprehension is probably my "weakest link," so to speak, and it's definitely on the top of my long list of things in which I need to improve.  My oral sentence structuring is getting better, but I still have a long way to go.  

Now about my second class...I didn't go.  I didn't skip, though!  I've never skipped a class at my own school, let alone one in France!  Long story short, two of my friends and I were out to lunch and we didn't understand the schedule (which was also in French, of course).  The lunch period was way shorter than we expected, and as we were walking back to the school, my friend got a call, saying that we were supposed to be in class at that moment.  A staff member found us on the street just a few seconds later and proceeded to chew us out...in French.  I didn't really know what she said, but I could tell she was angry.  We rushed back to the school, all the while helping each other formulate our apologies and trying to recite them out loud.  When we finally made it to the school, they sent us to the office where we got reprimanded again...in French.  My class was out on a field trip, so I was spared the embarrassment of having to walk in right in the middle of class.  However, after all that confusion and misunderstanding, the tears were pretty close to flowin'.  I met my prof later, though, and she was really nice about it all.  Thank the Lord for mercy. :)

Just a few hours ago, we got to see the Tour de France come through Montpellier!  It went much faster than how it is on TV, but it was fun to see and a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I gotta say, it was pretty cool.  Check out some of my pictures:

All in all, the past 2 days have been exciting, frustrating, fun, nerve-wracking, and humbling.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the week.  It will probably be described with all of those same adjectives, but they will all be magnified to the 3rd power. :)  Look out for my end-of-the-week blog on either Saturday or Sunday!

Sincerely,

An Ever-So-Slightly French Speaking, Mentally Tired but Excited Self-Proclaimed Nerd