Class? What Class?

I have officially been in Europe for over a month and I feel like time is going so fast that I won’t be able to do everything that I want to. I can blame school for that, especially my Question Politique, which always is moving from Thursday to Friday. The prof is from Paris and commutes in for the day, but two weeks ago his son was sick and then last week he accidently mixed up which classes should be taught when so I sat through an entire pointless (but interesting) lecture and had to miss my actual class because I had other classes when he did the make-up that same day. This week, I’ll have that class twice and I can only hope he doesn’t make the same mistake again. If there’s one thing I’ve gathered from my time in France it’s that I cannot wait to get back to the American education system. It makes sense to me and it makes sense to a lot of people. Even a couple of the French people living in the residence think that the French are just being… French. That seems to be the joke of the century around here since I hear it about once a day from both international students and French people alike.

I haven’t yet dropped a course, but I sure am tempted to do so. I knew coming over here that there would be a steep learning curve, but I don’t think my French can improve that fast to deal with political philosophy in Western Democracy since that’s the class that has been giving me the most trouble. I thought Hobbes was confusing in English and now he’s ten times as confusing in French. It’s very odd for me to actually dread going to my political science classes since those are generally the ones I prefer the most back at St. Norbert. Two of them, Western Democracies and Question Politique, are pretty over my head in both content as well as language. Today I was so happy in Western Democracies that I could actually understand about 60% of the lecture. And then my one English political science class, American foreign policy, is more like a very basic history class. As in domestic history that I haven’t even covered before because it’s basically assumed that you don’t need two hours to cover Affluence and Conformity in the 1950s—especially in a foreign policy class. Never mind the fact that the prof would rather lecture about that over the Bay of Pigs… go figure. This class has, however, given me lots and lots of evidence of how certain stereotypes about America and American culture can take base with the French.

My favorite classes would have to be the two serious history classes—British history and French history. The British history is really interesting, it’s in English, and it’s pretty basic information and nothing too new. The French history is a bit more challenging as it’s all in French for two hours but the subject more than makes up for it. We’re covering the political history of France from about 1814 onward. I’m really not sure how far we’re going, but I hope at least to the Vichy government. Besides the fact, the prof of that class is a wonderful, wonderful person who said that she’ll never grade me on my French (I can use a dictionary and an occasional English word in my tests) but rather on did I understand the lecture and material covered in class. I officially love that woman.

Other than that, I’ve had a pretty low-key week. Last weekend I went to a concert as well as a party to celebrate the anniversary of one of the guy’s here announcement of coming out. If that makes sense. The concert I went to was of a band called “of Montreal”. I had no idea what to expect but the music wasn’t bad and it was one of the oddest experiences of my life. The band loves to “create” art on stage to go along with their music using human props… and they had everything including chicken and pig costumes. Go figure. Lille actually has decent concerts coming through and Joseph Arthur and his band is coming through soon so I’m going to try and check that out. The anniversary party was amazing. We all dressed up in colors of the rainbow (I was purple) and headed out on the town. I’m sure we were quite the sight. One, we were speaking English and two, we were wearing colors. Unheard of. I love the fact that all the international students hang out together in a large group, it really makes it easier to be over here plus there are some really interesting people and you never know what’s going to be the topic du jour.

One thing that is so hard to get used to here is that everything is up in the air constantly. Last week I was looking at plane tickets to Barcelona and this weekend I think I’m going to look into hostels in Dublin. Everything changes so quickly and everything moves so quickly. I honestly hope that I get to do everything I want to, but am afraid that I’m going to miss out on something eventually. There’s always some suggestion or some place that I remember I want to visit/re-visit, it makes me wish I had more time to just travel and see. Wonder what side will win out… travel or study?

Yum: Forget Erbs and Gerbs or even Yesterdog, kebabs is where it's at for late night food. Crazy Food is developing into a late night treat and I can now smell them from a kilometer away.