So unfortunately the internet in my dorm is absolutely terrible which has made the blogging thing more than difficult to do… but now I’ll play catch up and try to stay consistent with the blogging.
Friday August 29, 2008THE BASIC ROUTINESo far Paris has been super amazing. Seriously. Most days work similarly… on a school day Danielley and I wake up around 7:30/8:00 and sometimes Skype with family or friends while we get ready for French class. Then we go to our French class from 9-12. I am in French 3 and Danielley is in French 4 (this is about the only time we are separated from each other, haha). At noon we go and get lunch and take our books back to the dorms. Then on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we walk back to the ACCENT Center (which is where our classes are) by 1:00 and have excursions where they take us to places around Paris to help us see different parts and learn a little about the history of it. It’s a great time but the excursions leave us all exhausted and most everyone takes naps from 4 until dinner time. After which we may go out, do something mellow, or just stay in and attempt to use our ridiculously slow internet to watch TV shows from ninjavideo.net (courtesy of Daren). Every day is something new and I’m loving it.
SCHOOLSchool is kinda funny… The ACCENT Center (ACCENT is the program that does the lifestyle part of our stay here) is located in a small courtyard on rue d. Faugbourg Saint-Antoine. It’s cute and the people are very friendly. It’s the center of our lives basically… it’s where our mail is sent, it is where we meet for group activities, it’s where the computers are and where we can print… etc. Next to that is the UC Center building (UC Center is the academic/school aspect of our stay here) and it’s a very small, simple building with classrooms and a few computers. Our classes are in either the ACCENT or the UC Center. The first two weeks is the French Practicum intensive class which is meant to get you back into being comfortable speaking French.. so you go through a lot of basics and have three hours of French daily (plus the 3 hour excursions on MWF), homework assignments and excursion reports to write. This class is usually the class you stay with into the regular school period when our other content courses start. There are about 18 people in each class so it becomes a very small community of people and you get to know them really well. On September 8th we start our content classes (yay!)… I am taking French Cinema and Histories of Paris (I dropped the French Art class because I didn’t need the credits). I’m super excited about both of them! The histories of Paris class takes you on excursions as well which is cool because we will get to learn about the history and then go see the actual places. That is maybe one of my favorite things about Paris/Europe… The history here is not really history. It is still so much a part of their lives and they do so much to preserve it. It’s quite different than America where they choose a few monuments to preserve and then destroy the rest constantly to keep modernizing the cities. And as much as the cities may be much higher tech, they’ve lost sight of the passion that architects here used to put in their work. The buildings here display an attention to detail that is completely lost in modern America (whose buildings I don’t even pay much attention to). The architecture is so elaborate (which would be considered gaudy in the US) and beautiful and even though much of it looks the same in my pictures, it’s overwhelming to see it in person and I looove it.
THE LIVING AREASo the dorms are dorms. They are small, crampy, and only have the basics. The kitchenette is terrible (as in the water never gets to boiling point) and the frigo [fridge] never gets cold enough, although that may just be a French thing?
Our
HOMESTAY is absolutely amazing. Danielle and I got super lucky and we were put in the same homestay together, yay! We each have our own rooms and we share a bathroom. Many of the other students have to share the bathroom with someone else in the family so we got very lucky. The rooms are small but a good size for what we are here for. There is pretty much nowhere to put our clothes, haha so for girls like us, it was a tough task figuring out what to do with it all! But we managed of course. The couple, Anne and Bruno Montalembert are super super nice. Bruno works for a bank and I’m not sure what Anne does but I think she does work somewhere. They have a country home in Fontainebleu that we’ve been told they visit on most weekends. The have a daughter who is 27 and a son who is 23. Tonight (Dimanche, le 31 aout/ Sunday August 31st) was our first night here. We got here and Anne was very welcoming and we sat in la salle de séjour (living room) to chat a little bit with her and Bruno. Anne then told us to go and unpack and that dinner would be at 8. It was cute because she would check in on us while we were unpacking like, every 10-15 minutes and say ‘ça va?’ to basically ask if everything was going okay.
Dinner was super delicious. They started with melon, which I don’t particularly like but I ate it anyway because it was like the first course salad type thing… as in it had it’s own plate, haha. So I didn’t want to be rude, and it turned out okay because it was very fresh and tasty. For the main course, they made us poulet (chicken), pomme de terre (potatoes), and sliced up pain (bread), avec d’leau (with some water). Bruno also offered us vin (wine) but we both declined the offer. For dessert (yes, they even baked us dessert!) Bruno had baked a prune tart. Honestly, I was a little worried about this because I’m not sure I like prune, but I ate it anyway and il est trés delicieux! (it is very delicious!) so that was great. After dinner Bruno insisted on taking us around the neighborhood to show us the two metro stops closest to us and the one he suggested we take to school. We also had to buy the monthly pass (since tomorrow is the 1st) and he urged us to buy it tonight as tomorrow everyone would be crowding around the pay stations to get theirs. We got to the Boucicart metro stop and they unfortunately no longer sell the carte d’orange. Paris is in the middle of upgrading their systems to electronic cards but it isn’t mandatory until January. It’s a more complicated process and you have to order a card that doesn’t come for a fort night (says Bruno, although I’m not sure what a fort night indicates exactly) which is probably why the school provided us with carte d’orange instead (the easier, older system). So Bruno, as kind as he is, buys himself a metro ticket to take us to the next stop to buy it. He’s great. Then we came back home and did our homework. Honestly, we couldn’t have gotten a nicer couple or house. Danielley and I are so pleased and we feel incredibly lucky ☺.
Phew! That was a lot... but I had to do it because I promised Mommy I would :)
More interesting things to come soon....
De Paris, Avec Amor,
Micheley
my delicious tortellinis :)
danielle's delicious salmon
most amazing chocolate and minty ice cream EVER.
De Paris, Avec Amor, Micheley <3
