Today I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. In the sleepless haze of frantically writing his final major assignment of freshman year, Chris had mixed up the time difference and thought it was 9am here when it was actually 7am! Ah well. I needed to cram an alarming amount of reading in anyway before my first class, so I snuck down to the second floor, where one of many dark, motel-like corridors leads to a computer room in which I could use Skype without waking the whole monastery next door. After all, misery loves company, and this particular company is regrettably hard to come by thanks to a seven-hour time difference!
The book was Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola, a late-nineteenth century work of realism that depicts the rise of a simultaneously opimistic and sinister consumer culture through the microcosm of a Parisian neighborhood on the rive droit, where a powerful, new invention-- the department store-- seduces hordes of society women into spending horrific amounts of money and crushes local businesses in the process. Might sound heavy but I enjoyed it.
Having done nothing all day but scan page after page until my eyes hurt and eat breakfast and lunch (we can keep food from Carrefour or le Grand Epicerie in the downstairs fridge), I crammed the last few pages of the 435-page monstrosity around 1pm, just in time to race over to l'Ecole, which is a 10 minute walk down the rue de Sevres.
Class is only twice a week, but it's three. hours. long. Today was our first day, and I barely made it through! The classroom is too small for the 16 of us, the chairs are made for kindergarteners, and there's only room for 8 students at the table. Furthermore, we got out late, so our plans to see the Musee Marmottan Monet in the 16th arrondissement were botched, and our stroll in the Bois de Boulogne there was interrupted by more wind and rain. But over the course of our fumbling first attempt to figure out the Metro, the five of us talked a lot about the course, and I discovered that I'm really enthusiastic about this time period and the books we're reading... though whether or not I enjoy class remains to be seen!
After getting some dinner (and Kinder chocolate bars!) next to le Bon Marche, my roommate, Isabelle (a rising Junior from Sydney, Australia who's taking a semester abroad this fall), and I decided the day might still be salvageable and found a French movie to go and see-- we've barely used the language thus far.
Success! I had my first non-embarrassing purchasing experience at the ticket booth, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, a smart comedy about a dinner party for a group of five friends in their forties that seems conventional until a prank about naming a son-to-be Adolf unintentionally brings all kinds of tensions to the surface. To top off the evening, we even survived walking back from Montparnasse after midnight!
No photos yet I'm afraid :-( I left my camera cord at home. Along with warm clothing. Apparently I wasn't too bright while preparing for the City of Lights :P
Bissous!
Having done nothing all day but scan page after page until my eyes hurt and eat breakfast and lunch (we can keep food from Carrefour or le Grand Epicerie in the downstairs fridge), I crammed the last few pages of the 435-page monstrosity around 1pm, just in time to race over to l'Ecole, which is a 10 minute walk down the rue de Sevres.
Class is only twice a week, but it's three. hours. long. Today was our first day, and I barely made it through! The classroom is too small for the 16 of us, the chairs are made for kindergarteners, and there's only room for 8 students at the table. Furthermore, we got out late, so our plans to see the Musee Marmottan Monet in the 16th arrondissement were botched, and our stroll in the Bois de Boulogne there was interrupted by more wind and rain. But over the course of our fumbling first attempt to figure out the Metro, the five of us talked a lot about the course, and I discovered that I'm really enthusiastic about this time period and the books we're reading... though whether or not I enjoy class remains to be seen!
After getting some dinner (and Kinder chocolate bars!) next to le Bon Marche, my roommate, Isabelle (a rising Junior from Sydney, Australia who's taking a semester abroad this fall), and I decided the day might still be salvageable and found a French movie to go and see-- we've barely used the language thus far.
Success! I had my first non-embarrassing purchasing experience at the ticket booth, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, a smart comedy about a dinner party for a group of five friends in their forties that seems conventional until a prank about naming a son-to-be Adolf unintentionally brings all kinds of tensions to the surface. To top off the evening, we even survived walking back from Montparnasse after midnight!
Bissous!
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