So today marked the first day of classes. For the first week we were just put into placement groups. My teacher's name was Roselynne, she was a middle-aged French woman, who made it very clear that she hated cheese and was divorced. To say the least, she was a fairly interesting woman but a really good teacher and extremely nice. We were also in class with a bunch of students from the University of Utah who were all extremely nice. In class we worked on vocabulary, grammatical structure, and the last part of our day was devoted to dictation and phonetics. We actually went to the language lab where they have a bunch of headsets that are all configured and heard at this "master station" which the teacher sits at. Whenever I made a mistake Roselynne would look at me and repeat my error and make sure that I said it back to her correctly.
Besides being super long this day was also super hot and unfortunately none of the rooms that we were in were air conditioned. I told my exchange coordinator (Anna) that I had to cool off at a movie or something. Next I went to a pretty awful French movie. It was about this overtly sexual girl who was attracted to her best friend's dad whom she convinced to have an affair with. Needless to say, this did not put me in a better mood but at least it cooled me down.
day 2 of school
So since I was so uncomfortably hot the day before, I decided to cool myself down by putting cold bottles between my legs. Hey, it worked! It brought my overall body temperature way down. Class was good today, I tend to take notes ravenously, as if I'm starving for knowledge. Even though this material was strictly review now I was able to understand everything that the teacher was saying so this week definitely helped with my fluency. In the language lab my dictation was really well done and it was rewarding to see very few red marks.
day 3 of pre-class
So I am having a hard time remembering if anything exciting happened in class. Well I can say one thing for sure today marked one of the worst "Michelle Lost episodes." So I knew which tram line I was supposed to take but I got off 4 stops later than I was supposed to at the very end of the line. Being completely frantic I started asking random people how to get to the university for foreign students. Bad question because there are like 4 universities in one area, so the question in itself was pretty bad. For some reason I was able to communicate pretty effectively with these gentlemen who decided to help me. It was pretty funny because they started talking amongst eachother, they said "Il fait vraiment chaude aujourd'hui" (It is really hot today). Then they proceeded to ask me for a drink from my evian bottle. Being kind of grossed out by some random dude just taking a gulp from my water bottle,I just told him to keep it. So they told me to go to the stop "Bibliothèque Université which was good information. Once I got off I proceeded to wander for like an hour. I went in and out of buildings, trying to navigate, sorting out french directions. Finally after wandering aimlessly for an hour a nice lady let me sit down and said "Do you want me to speak in English" to that I was like "Oui" and then I just started full out bawling. She then asked me how long I had been in France and I told her almost 2 weeks. She explained that was about right for the culture shock. So after I was able to explain my predicament to the nice lady, she proceeded to find my classroom and then gave me ample directions to find it. Success! About an hour and a half into class I was able to find the room. Hallelujah! Another funny event that took place that day was when I asked the question about relationship status. In French class when we don't really understand the proper context saying things can mean a whole different thing. So in the US to informally mean you are in a relationship, you can say "I'm taken" so I just figured "Je suis occupée" meant the same thing. Well apparently it doesn't! After about a minute of a full on fit of laughter initiated by Roselynne, I learned that occupé refers to toilets!
le dernier jour
Even though I knew that I was going to miss Roselynne I was excited for the last day of class. I knew that I was still unable to trust myself when it came to directions, so I decided to let Hayley lead the way to class and simply follow her lead. Today in class Roselynne gave me a list of French movies to watch, so that was très utile (very useful). Then after class was done I decided to go to La Place Victor Hugo and do some shopping. I knew that I wanted to buy a radio, so I went to Le Fnac (sort of like Fry's, a specialty electronic store). I also bought some shoes, trying to find the same store that I went to for my first day was virtually impossible. Still to this day I don't know where to find that store or what it was called. So I went to André and ended up buying like 4 pairs of shoes. They are all so cute, and the sales are out of sight here. I don't think my fellow classmates understand how shopping deprived I am, but I am definitely making up for it right now.