After teaching being my thing for the last nine months, it’s weird to think of doing something else. But that’s what is happening, and life is moving forward. My “summer vacation” week went ok, I was able to spend time with friends and catch up on some other random things. Spent a lot of time reading. Spent a lot of time spazing out that I no longer have a regular paycheck and am not doing anything (even though it was only 4 or 5 days I was doing nothing). I was spazing out one day like I do, so I went shopping and bought some books at Saint Michelle. I read “Confessions of a Shopaholic” in one sitting, and when I looked at the time it was 5am. I went to bed (woke up Florian, who wanted to know what the hell I was doing up so late) and only got about 3 hours of sleep before I got up with Florian. And the weird thing is, I felt so much better the rest of the day. I was not stressed or tired. Isn’t that odd that I felt better after not sleeping? Isn’t it suppose to work the other way around? Just something quirky about my life I thought I would share.
Anyways, on another note that makes me seem less manic, French classes at the Sorbonne started today. I’m super stoked, as this is a really great program and I have heard amazing things from about 3 or 4 friends of mine who have taken their classes. I got up this morning at 7:40am and for some reason realized that I miscalculated the time it would take to get to the school, so I rushed out of the apartment in 15 minutes. Fortunately I ran into someone who was going to the same orientation as I was, and she was actually smart enough to find the location the day before. Lucky for me. But I’ve been to enough of these things to know that they don’t cover anything important in the first 20 minutes because 1. They are French and they take their time and 2. they are smart enough to know that even if they say it starts exactly at 8:30, there are going to be several people who have never used the metro before/can’t read a map/ can’t find the deliberately hidden street signs, thus there is no point in covering material that half the people are going to miss. I got there at 8:32, so everything was dandy.
So around 8:50, they read off the lists of classes. I fell under the category of an 8 week intermediate class from 10:30-12:30. First, let me say how pleased I am with this time, it’s not at 8:30 so I can still sleep in during my summer but it’s not so late where I can’t enjoy a nice lunch afterwards. A bunch of us went to a cafe to wait until it was time for our class, and even before class started I could tell that this was going to be a good course. I met people from all over the world who were very fascinating and friendly people. We spoke in French the whole time, and it was great to speak with people who have the same level of French that you have. Although most of them already spoke 3 or 4 other languages and had traveled and lived all over the world, and that’s where they put this little American to shame….So we had out cafes and talked. Most of them had just arrived in Paris and this was their first time living here, so it’s always interesting to hear first impressions on the city. I have spent so much time here that I’ve almost forgotten what the culture shock is like. Afterwards we headed to our class, and that went well. The professor is very lively and approachable, and surprisingly enough I could hold my own! Dear god when did I learn how to speak French?! Seriously, even now when people ask me what languages I can speak, I shyly say English and a little bit of French. But at what point can you consider yourself to have mastered a second language? My French is not perfect, but it’s good enough to hold a conversation for a few hours. It’s just bizarre, even after living in France for over a year to be able to say “Yeah, I speak two languages” or “oui, je parle en anglais et en francais, quoi.” It amuses me.
