Classes, Les Soldes and Arles

 I survived my first week of French classes! I am taking grammar and phonetics with other American students and a conversation class where we just chat in French for two hours about different topics (also with American students). I tried out a class called civilization of the south (of France) but it was two and a half hours of lecturing about the prehistory of France. The topic seems interesting enough for two or three classes, I just don't think I could handle it for the whole semester and I am so accustomed to taking 50 minute classes at home, that 2.5 hours is pretty unimaginable. I think some people will really enjoy it, but it's not for me. 
My two integrated classes with French students are a literature class and a class called the pragmatics of language. My lit class, consisting of a CM (big lecture) and a TD (discussion section), both of which have really interesting topics, I really like.  For the TD we are reading Homer and Dante and Ovid and talking about the descent into hell. I have already studied some of these works before, so it will be really cool to learn about them from the French side of things. My other integrated class I'm still struggling with whether or not I want to take it. It's about linguistics and communication which I think is really interesting but maybe something I want to learn about in English before I try it in French. I don't want it to be totally over my head. I have about another week to add/drop classes, so I will be trying out a class on wine and culture in France before deciding whether to take that or the language class. We shall see. 


All in all, it was a pretty exhausting and overwhelming week. Even though for the first three days I only had one class per day, it was really tiring to go back to classes and have them all in French. It takes so much more concentration just to listen to what they're saying, let alone get it all down on paper. In some of my classes the French students would just chat to each other, and the professor would ignore them and maybe talk a little louder. I tried to sit near the front in all my classes, but French people do not feel the need to talk very loudly, so that made it all the harder to understand. Hopefully my comprehension will get better and better. I haven't been speaking as much French as I would have liked, since a lot of the people in my program aren't totally comfortable with the language yet and it's hard to force it, since speaking English comes so easily and talking to French people is intimidating. Having classes definitely helps though, so hopefully I'll  make some French friends who will be patient with me and help me practice on them. I'm also hoping to be able to start swimming with the club at my school, so that will be some more French exposure as well.


Wednesday was the first day of "les soldes" which is a pretty big deal sales event across all of France, where stores clear out their entire stock from the previous season in January and July, by putting things on sale up to 50% and 70% off. It's crazy. And it lasts for a month. I have managed to limit myself to only a few items so far, but it has only been 5 days, soooo we'll see what happens. 


Yesterday, Saturday, was our first free excursion run by my program. We took a bus to the small ancient Roman town of Arles, about an hour away from Montpellier. We started in the museum, checking out tons of artifacts and architecture from when Arles was a part of the Roman Empire. It was really cool, but a little long and all in French, so it required a lot of attention that I didn't quite have after waking up at 7:45 am on a Saturday morning. Then we went into the city for lunch and a guided tour of the city. It was a great place, but freezing cold! And when I say freezing, it was probably about 50 degrees, which is pretty cold compared to the unusually balmy 60 that it has been since we got here. I was definitely not dressed for the weather, so that made it a little bit rough. It was great to see the city though. It is where van Gogh lived, so we saw some of the places he painted. 

We also saw a huge amphitheatre (oops! French spelling) and the theater where people fought bulls and gladiators fought each other. There were people there learning to swordfight, which was pretty funny. It was a fun trip, but cold and a very long day, so we were pretty chilled and tired once we got home. 

Beautiful sunset at the end of the day!