The Classes Continue

12 September 2012

After a good night's sleep, it's time to start my second day of classes: Intense French Language, French History, and French Cinema! I discovered that in most of my classes, the students are split evenly between half American students and half Chinese students. However, the strangest, yet most interesting, thought hit me halfway through my first class: We're all speaking French here, but if I started speaking English, only half of this class would understand me...and if one of the students in the class started speaking Chinese, only half of the class would understand them...yet we are all speaking French, and we can all understand each other. I just thought that was the coolest thing, how speaking French could break an intense language barrier between me and a Chinese student who speaks Chinese! Learning a foreign language really is a magical thing! (So tell everyone you know to enroll themselves or their future children in a foreign language class. Go, do it now.)

All of my classes went very well, and I am very excited to start getting back into the swing of things and opening my mind to a whole new world of knowledge. Especially the film studies class; we're going to be watching about 12 French movies and analyzing them and the time period in which they were made, how they were filmed, who directed these movies and why they directed them in a certain way, etc. I'm really interested to find out how other students view these movies, and also how I will view them as well!

After classes were all said and done, I went into town with Julie and showed her around downtown a little bit, showed her some tram stops, showed her the post office, shopped around for school supplies with her at the local department store Monoprix, all while talking and getting to know a little more about each other. Everyone in our group is all just falling into the swing of things so nicely, I am so glad we are all able to get along and enjoy each other's company so much!

Other than three classes and some time in town, I can't say I did much else, unfortunately. Minus doing some homework, finishing up a few postcards, and catching up on reading some of my books in French, I went to bed a little early to physically and mentally prepare myself for my 8:30 class on Thursday morning. Of all my years of college, this is my first class that I am starting before 10:00. But, I suppose it's a French class in France, so I'm willing to put up with it. =)