Fifth of November

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The last few years I've watched V for Vendetta on the 5th of November. I think the first time I saw it, we were in Providence, RI on our great northeastern college tour. Strange to think about.

Things are really picking up in Bordeaux. Last night there was a sort of welcome party hosted at Place de la Victoire for the Letters/Linguistics department, and Maria and I went. I met several kids I recognized from my linguistics classes, and one kid I met on the tram a few weeks back whose name turned out to be Vianney. He turned out to know Alan, which I found to be sort of crazy -- I mean, if you only know five people in a city, what's the likelihood that they know each other?

Tonight, we went with some of the people we met last night to yet another almost-university-sponsored party at a club, this time for the Applied Foreign Languages department (LEA) -- they were all Chinese-English majors. In France, when you major in a foreign language, you major in English AND some other language. I think this is a pretty good idea...I always think it's strange that people can graduate with a bachelor's degree in JUST French (or any other foreign language) when it's so common in other countries to learn at least one other language.

Perhaps it's not as strange as these crazy parties hosted by clubs at the university. Maybe campuses that haven't had quite so many deaths by alcohol poisoning as OU are less strict about these things, but it seems completely weird to me that they should advertise a party like this at the beginning of my class. My grammar professor was at the Letters/Linguistics party last night! Even weirder, no one was surprised to see him! Apparently that's normal in France.

Comments

  1. Charlie06 November, 2009 10:26

    Strange question, is Vianney's last name Chabot by any chance?

    ReplyDelete

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