Falling down on my blogging job.
This morning I was walking to the tram past a couple of ladies with clipboards. I learned after the first week that once the ladies with the clipboards conducting the survey or trying to get signatures for the petition figure out that you're not French, they absolutely refuse to talk to you further even if you display interest.
So I was walking by with my headphones and they made eye contact and I just told them sorry, I'm not French (except I said it in French) - and they're like "wait! Are you English?" (in English) and the confused, resulting conversation that took place in mixed French (on my part) and English (on theirs) was apparently intended to lure me into the church of scientology. I was confused at first -- aside from passing some Jehova's Witnesses at a tram stop once, I have not been proselytized to once since arriving here -- not even in all the churches and cathedrals I've visited. When I looked confused they said "Scientology...you haven't heard of it? They have it in LA," and I stifled the urge to laugh and said I had to take the next tram. Which was true.
I have to leave about 45 minutes before my classes to get to school on time, and even then it's iffy. Usually, during the morning or afternoon rush, the tram is so packed that when it stops to let passengers get off and on, there's a massive struggle to get to the door or to get on before the doors close. Which causes the tram to stay at the quai longer than intended since the passengers keep pushing the doors back open when they close, and then by the time the tram finally gets to the next stop there are way more passengers waiting than there would otherwise be, and the effect snowballs. Especially when one tram gets bogged down like this and the one scheduled behind it has to slow down to keep the intervals going. It's kind of a mess, but I am trying to adapt to the French flow of things and not let it bother me. It helps that I'm definitely not the only one late when something like this happens, as it seems the greater part of students take the tram to the university.
I had a few minutes of panic when I got to the discussion for my Art History lecture (which is actually just a smaller group lecture, evidently) and realized I'd missed two solid hours of lecture that were important. I mean, mostly just vocabulary about architecture, but since what little I know about architectural vocabulary is all in English, it was particularly important that I be there. By the end of the hour it became apparent that the real thing to panic about was that there was a huge project being assigned about a structure of our choice that was supposed to be a 15 minute oral presentation detailing the architectural elements of one of the cathedrals on a list. Fifteen minutes in front of 60+ French-speaking art history majors did not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. After class I talked to the professor and she told me to make a written report instead, and gave me an extra week to pick a structure -- I was really relieved. Apparently it pays to appear helpless and foreign?
Otherwise, class is going okay. I love my phonetics class. The professor is my easiest to understand and the class involves a lot of trying to make sounds in languages you've never even heard of, and having discussions about what exactly one does to make whatever sound. It's especially interesting because occasionally she'll point out differences between various regional accents within France that I didn't notice. Yesterday she asked if anyone came from an English-speaking country, and had me pronounce "pie" for the class (and had a francophone pronounce "paille" which sounds kind of the same) to demonstrate that English speakers aspirate the letter "p", and then the whole class was trying to pronounce that sound. Very interesting, I think.
My grammar and syntax class is also really interesting, for different reasons. My professor speaks really quickly and sort of mumbles, and speaks like normal people do, and I guess I never realized how professors speak so much more formally while lecturing until it was so difficult to understand him. On top of it, the class is structured in such a way that, basically, the professor makes "errors" in grammar and then asks us to identify what's wrong with them and whether they really are errors or not. He's one of those that refuses to just give out information and intentionally misunderstands every answer a student gives. It's really interesting for me, since I have to keep up with what he's saying and try and work out points of grammar I may or may not have even known in the first place, in addition to working out what the students are saying.
My typology class is by far the most boring, and was rescheduled from Monday to Thursday this week, so I don't get to have my full four-day weekend this time. I hope it doesn't happen often, but I guess I'm glad I don't have class at all on Thursdays. They can reschedule classes with impunity because all of the French kids have the exact same schedule and shouldn't be in class any other times...for me, it might not always work out so cleanly.
And, of course, I'm loving my Italian class. Completely not surprising. I'm kind of disappointed that our text is so juvenile. Granted, it is all in Italian -- they're way into the immersion thing! Our teacher scolded a student for bringing a French-Italian dictionary to class today (which will remind me not to bring mine -- although, since it's French-Italian, one wonders how useful it will be to me).
I'm excited about Friday, because I get to go back and see if my camera is ready yet. I've missed it a surprising amount. Probably I will be more motivated to do interesting things and then to blog about them when I have it back.
So I was walking by with my headphones and they made eye contact and I just told them sorry, I'm not French (except I said it in French) - and they're like "wait! Are you English?" (in English) and the confused, resulting conversation that took place in mixed French (on my part) and English (on theirs) was apparently intended to lure me into the church of scientology. I was confused at first -- aside from passing some Jehova's Witnesses at a tram stop once, I have not been proselytized to once since arriving here -- not even in all the churches and cathedrals I've visited. When I looked confused they said "Scientology...you haven't heard of it? They have it in LA," and I stifled the urge to laugh and said I had to take the next tram. Which was true.
I have to leave about 45 minutes before my classes to get to school on time, and even then it's iffy. Usually, during the morning or afternoon rush, the tram is so packed that when it stops to let passengers get off and on, there's a massive struggle to get to the door or to get on before the doors close. Which causes the tram to stay at the quai longer than intended since the passengers keep pushing the doors back open when they close, and then by the time the tram finally gets to the next stop there are way more passengers waiting than there would otherwise be, and the effect snowballs. Especially when one tram gets bogged down like this and the one scheduled behind it has to slow down to keep the intervals going. It's kind of a mess, but I am trying to adapt to the French flow of things and not let it bother me. It helps that I'm definitely not the only one late when something like this happens, as it seems the greater part of students take the tram to the university.
I had a few minutes of panic when I got to the discussion for my Art History lecture (which is actually just a smaller group lecture, evidently) and realized I'd missed two solid hours of lecture that were important. I mean, mostly just vocabulary about architecture, but since what little I know about architectural vocabulary is all in English, it was particularly important that I be there. By the end of the hour it became apparent that the real thing to panic about was that there was a huge project being assigned about a structure of our choice that was supposed to be a 15 minute oral presentation detailing the architectural elements of one of the cathedrals on a list. Fifteen minutes in front of 60+ French-speaking art history majors did not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. After class I talked to the professor and she told me to make a written report instead, and gave me an extra week to pick a structure -- I was really relieved. Apparently it pays to appear helpless and foreign?
Otherwise, class is going okay. I love my phonetics class. The professor is my easiest to understand and the class involves a lot of trying to make sounds in languages you've never even heard of, and having discussions about what exactly one does to make whatever sound. It's especially interesting because occasionally she'll point out differences between various regional accents within France that I didn't notice. Yesterday she asked if anyone came from an English-speaking country, and had me pronounce "pie" for the class (and had a francophone pronounce "paille" which sounds kind of the same) to demonstrate that English speakers aspirate the letter "p", and then the whole class was trying to pronounce that sound. Very interesting, I think.
My grammar and syntax class is also really interesting, for different reasons. My professor speaks really quickly and sort of mumbles, and speaks like normal people do, and I guess I never realized how professors speak so much more formally while lecturing until it was so difficult to understand him. On top of it, the class is structured in such a way that, basically, the professor makes "errors" in grammar and then asks us to identify what's wrong with them and whether they really are errors or not. He's one of those that refuses to just give out information and intentionally misunderstands every answer a student gives. It's really interesting for me, since I have to keep up with what he's saying and try and work out points of grammar I may or may not have even known in the first place, in addition to working out what the students are saying.
My typology class is by far the most boring, and was rescheduled from Monday to Thursday this week, so I don't get to have my full four-day weekend this time. I hope it doesn't happen often, but I guess I'm glad I don't have class at all on Thursdays. They can reschedule classes with impunity because all of the French kids have the exact same schedule and shouldn't be in class any other times...for me, it might not always work out so cleanly.
And, of course, I'm loving my Italian class. Completely not surprising. I'm kind of disappointed that our text is so juvenile. Granted, it is all in Italian -- they're way into the immersion thing! Our teacher scolded a student for bringing a French-Italian dictionary to class today (which will remind me not to bring mine -- although, since it's French-Italian, one wonders how useful it will be to me).
I'm excited about Friday, because I get to go back and see if my camera is ready yet. I've missed it a surprising amount. Probably I will be more motivated to do interesting things and then to blog about them when I have it back.
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