Friday, August 29, 2014

Finally Friday.

Bonjour!

This week has been quite hectic. I was certain on Thursday that it was actually Friday and was seriously looking forward to the weekend, only to realize that I still had one more day until Saturday.

There's so many practical, not-so-fun things I have to get done now that I'm actually in France. I have to register with housing benefits, housing insurance, and the French Social Security since I'll be here longer than 3 months. But before I can do that, I have to open a French bank account. And once I do that, I need to get a phone that works here. Blah.

It's not that any of this should be particularly hard, but doing it with people who speak another language adds a whole new layer of difficulty. Of course, there are many people at the school who are willing to help and will be available to do so next week, but there are 77 other international students who also need help with this... It will be interesting!

Let's talk about more interesting things!

We started French classes on Thursday-- learning a new language may turn out to be harder than I thought. We took a short test to gauge our level of French. Surprisingly, I was put in the 2nd level of 4. From what I could tell, the first level was reserved for foreign students whose English wasn't as strong as the others. Level 2 was mostly native English speakers from America and Europe.

The classes were 3 hours long. Yes, three. And if I could just rant for a second-- I don't know how they expect us to sit in these ridiculous wooden chairs for that long every single day. They are the most uncomfortable things. And they're squished really close together so there is absolutely no room to move about. It gets a bit stuffy because either they're not running the air conditioner or there's not one. (I'm sure it's the latter.)

Anyway, French lessons are going well! It is so hard to understand the native French speakers because they talk fast and run all of their words together, so it's hard to really learn any pronunciation from them. Our teacher, however, speaks really slowly for us and repeats the words over and over and makes us answer questions and tell about ourselves in French. Even with the few words I know, I'm more confident using them since I've practiced the correct usages.

Today after class and after I stood in line for an hour to get my wifi password (so relieved!), I met with a few friends to do some exploring. Our days have been pretty packed and everyone is tired, so the furthest most of us had made it was to the supermarket for bedding and food. We walked around the city center a bit. There are so many small shops and it seems like hundreds of bakeries.

There's a small square in front of Poitiers Notre Dame where there are a few small cafes. We had lunch there (if you saw those terrible pictures of me of Facebook, that's where we were. Thanks, Joe.) There's something so magical about eating outside and being surrounded by these beautiful, old places.

We decided to walk to Blossac Parc a few blocks away. It was beautiful. The foliage was trimmed and uniform. There were people walking through and enjoying the day. We sat under some trees near a playground area and talked for several hours. I was there with Lizette (also from SUU), Nancy (from Taiwan), and Alois (from Germany). It's wonderful the things you can learn from someone who didn't grow up the same way you did. I feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to get to know so many people from so many different places.

Until next time,
Je t'embrasse,

Sarah




No comments:

Post a Comment