Okay, I'll admit, it's not perfect by any means. American drivers are definitely way more respectful of street rules- I would probably never want to drive a car here. People (including me) jaywalk all the time. People don't always pick up after their dogs poop. Also, I'd probably never see my American friends again. I guess you win some, you lose some... ;)
Anyway, apparently I've been so caught up in my own world here that I haven't even talked about my school's campus! Duh, silly me. We don't really have a campus at IAU College (Institute for American Universities). We only have 3 buildings and they're all down the street from each other. I wish I had a better explanation, or a photo. It's very unexciting. Everything closes at like 5 or 7 PM and weekends, so we can't even be total nerds and do homework at the library at convenient times (even though I have a twenty-page art history paper due in 13 days). Oh, that's the other thing that's a bit inconvenient here in France- the hours of stores and buildings are all inconvenient and close pretty early. I think I've mentioned that before... but yeah, for the most part, no late night grocery shopping!
Okay, so on to the exciting activities of the week! There weren't really that many. I went to my first wine-tasting on Monday! We had rosé (which is very popular in the south), white wine, and red wine. I probably just haven't had wine enough to acquire a taste for it, because even though all the wines tasted different, I didn't really have a preference or an aversion to any. I think I'm underwhelmed by wine because I always expect it to taste like fruit juice, and it never does. I always expect to like it (like fruit juice... mmm) and be like Omg so yummy but then I'm like, Oh... this isn't fruit juice. It's sour or bitter and warm and fizzles down the throat. I mean, I'm not not a fan, but I'm not a fan, so I guess I've just been rather indifferent to my French alcohol experience (don't tell the authorities!).
Ready for the wine-tasting! With baguettes and comté cheese to boot
Tuesday was Lucie's last day at Marie-Claude's, so we had to say goodbye to each other :(
On Wednesday during my French writing class, we went to this little park (it was a lot prettier in real life) to read some of our written works to each other!
I also had my first art history exam :'( It was ok.
On Wednesday I also went to my first French outdoor theatre experience. I was originally going to go Thursday night to see a real play with real adult actors, but I'm going to Barcelona Thursday night! So I went to see this one instead, called Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon. It was a cute little comedy (that was only like 45 minutes long), played by young kids. Some of them had some real talent! But pretty much all of them forgot at least one line at one point or another, so it was more cute than amazing. Here's a picture of Perrichon's wife and daughter (the lighting on my phone was horrendous, ugh).
I guess as a final reflection for this post, I'd like to talk about my growth with French. It's still pretty amazing to me how much my French has improved--I can feel it by the day. I've even noticed that Marie-Claude has been speaking faster more often, probably because I can understand it now! And I've been trying to speak faster too. However, it's interesting because I feel really anxious when I think about having to speak to complete strangers. I feel like everyone at IAU (like teachers, friends, the people who work there) understands that we're all students learning French, so our French won't be perfect. Like I don't feel anxious at all speaking to my friends or teachers, because even if I make a mistake or speak really slowly, they'll understand me (and of course my friends are also learning, so they make mistakes too). But then I think about speaking to strangers or workers at the train station or café people or anyone and everyone who isn't Marie-Claude or Lucie or my teachers or IAU people, and I start feeling a little bit of anxiety. Like I'm afraid I won't be able to get my point across, or perhaps worse, I won't be able to understand them and then they'll start speaking English. My goal is probably to avoid having anyone speak English to me because they notice my lack of fluency in French. Things are fine when I do speak to strangers and I can understand them almost perfectly, but just thinking about it beforehand makes me nervous.
I guess it's similar to how I feel with Chinese. I pretty much only feel comfortable speaking Mandarin with my parents and definitely feel anxious about speaking it with people I haven't spoken to before without my parents there, which is interesting because I speak it very fluently. But even though I'm fluent, I don't understand a lot of the really advanced stuff that people my age would understand. I may be afraid that people will notice how little I understand it in comparison to other native Chinese kids my age. Or maybe I'm just so used to speaking it in informal settings with my parents that I don't like sharing that side of me with the rest of the world. Who knows.
But anyway, it's pretty cool and actually a little bit mind-numbing because I'm getting to the point where I can actually say what I want to say without planning it out completely in my head. So sometimes I'll think full thoughts in my head in French, but then my brain starts hurting a little because I'll be pushing the English out and then sometimes I'll be thinking in both languages at the same time and it's just all pretty confusing. And then Mandarin gets mixed in there too. AHH. But I'm glad to be immersed in France because instead of learning from the textbook, I'm now learning the language the way babies learn languages! By making mistakes. It's great. :) Today I was thinking about how weird it's going to be when I'm back in the US and none of the signs will have French on them anymore... ahhhhhhh. I'm halfway done with my 6 weeks in France. Time's been flying so fast!!!! I can't believe it.
-Cindy
