Wishing I were catching a snitch in quidditch instead of reporting (a month and a half late) on the sitch.

Here’s the sitch:
I ended up dropping Persian after being rejected from the Critical Language Scholarship Program. I have the entire book and CDs if I plan to continue on my own. I dropped my linguistics class in French because it was basically all information I’d already learned and, worse, it was taught by the most boring professor ever. Ever. On the bright side of things, I really enjoyed both of my Masters courses in English: Language and Space and Racial Discourse in Britain. I’ve finished both essays for the latter and my take home essays/exam is planned out for the former. I’m basically done here with my ISEP academic year! Just forms to turn in, really!
In other news, I’ve been sorting out my finaly year at the University of Iowa. I’m more than pleased to inform those still reading my happy little blog that I have been selected to be a summer orientation guide for the Honors Program! I’ll get to talk to incoming honors students about all sorts of fun stuff during the orientation sessions! It’s a job I’ve been interested in since my own orientation in the summer of 2008. I’m really looking forward to it. :) Also related to academics, I’ve begun the process of applying for a Marshall Scholarship. Marshall Scholarships are awarded to about 40 students nationally every year for 2 years of graduate study in the UK at the institution of the recipient’s choice. In order to even compete nationally, I have to first apply to be a nominee for the University of Iowa. This means sorting out references, writing essays/statements of purpose, and researching UK universities to select 2 to apply to with the scholarship if I were to get it. It’s a fair amount of stressful work, trying to make myself sound as awesome as possible via papers, made more difficult by my academic nonsense and lack of involvement this year. But there you have it: consider this my asking for your thoughts, support, prayers, etc.
In the immediate academic future, I also have some plans. Inspiration has struck for an honors thesis for my French degree. Hoorah! My advisor sounds really interested/supportive as well, so I’m looking forward to working on it this summer and fall. I’ve also selected my courses for Fall 2011. They are as follows:
Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic
The Structure of English
Introduction to Islamic Civilization
The Bible and the Holocaust
Religion and Women
Ballroom Dancing (!)
I’ve decided to complete a Teaching English as a Second Language concentration for my Linguistics degree and have switched my Ancient Civilizations minor to Religious Studies. I’m pretty excited about all of it, especially ballroom dancing! I’m also working on being admitted to an online environmental science course with Reading Area Community College that I can do while being an orientation guide for Honors!

I believe that’s all for now: information overload and a tired hand.

(Oh, as an aside, I’ll be going to Edinburgh on 29/4 and returning to Lille 5/5. I’m moving out of my residence 6/5 and meeting my family in London 7/5.)

The end is near.

Toujours Apologetique...

Still apologizing, my party people.

I fully want to talk about Florence and Venice, a trip to Paris back in early February, a friend coming to visit for St. Patrick's Day, some school things, future things.. So much, really. It's just hard to get started and hard to find the time when I'm so distracted by other things.

Definitely planning on updates this weekend. I made a short video explaining all of this, but the internet is so terrible it wouldn't even upload. Thus, even if I can't upload photos of places (which is totes exactly what people want on here..) then I'll at least try and recap things in words, just potentially not in my usual, long, rambling manner.

Bisous.

Behh, oui, trop longtemps...

Il faisait trop longtemps..

It’s been a while, really. A month, almost.

My b.

So, anyway, as a general update about my schooling here (since my parents are worried that I partypartyparty and traveltraveltravel instead of actually attending classes….)

I’ve changed my schedule around a bit, as two of the courses I’d signed on to take were going to be impossibly difficult. As it stands, I’m taking Persian, a masters course in linguistics, a masters course in literature that focuses on racism in Britain in the 20^th century, and linguistic theory.

Persian is still pretty boring as far as actual class time is concerned, but I’m trying desperately to stay motivated in case I somehow receive a CLS scholarship for this summer. (I’m supposed to find out by “mid-February” which is, in fact, very soon..) Effort, effort. Must find effort!

Language and Space is taught in English by this really great professor. His style of teaching is much, much more American than anyone else I’ve encountered here at Lille III and it’s not only comforting, but very effective for my learning. We get to talk about really interesting things. Posture verbs, motion and manner verbs, and grammatical constraints on them. :D Loads of other things too, I’m sure, but we’re only a few weeks into the semester.

My course about race relations in Britain is potentially my favorite. It’s at 8:30 in the morning on Tuesdays, but the professor is amazing. He’s completely awake, full of energy, and likes to make sly comments. He’s very knowledgeable and the course itself is fascinating. I’ve never learned much of anything about Britain and I know only vaguely about race relations in the US, so it’s really wonderful.

Linguistic Theory is a final year course for French majors who are specializing in linguistics. My professor is compleeeeeeetely boring and lectures the entire 3 hours 9:30-12:30 and then again another hour 2-3. Straight lecturing and reading from a paper, basically. Luckily, it’s been mainly about historical linguistics and language evolution/families/typology which is what I love. It’s not been too difficult, though last week, my professor said a few words in French that I had never heard previously (so I pretended to write them down in my notes while panicking.)

In any case, my courses are really going just fine and I still have loads of free time here.

Well, I mean, not course-time. I mainly waste all my free time, and I’ve been much more social this semester.

But being social updates will have to wait until later, as I am about to go be social again.

Hopefully, à demain!

Examens.

Les examensssssssssss.

It's funny, because even with all those "s"s I wrote, the French wouldn't pronounce it anyway, harharharhar.

But really.

Exams. Exams this week.


Intensive French, Persian, and Arabic tomorrow.
Translation and an oral exam/interview for my conversation course on Tuesday.
History of the English language on Wednesday.


And then, mes chers amis, it's off to Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Manchester until around the 28th(???). More about that later. And by later, I mean "after my exams" and "after I've packed" and "after I've booked places to stay in Tallinn and Helsinki".


And a post about all the hilarious things I've been doing will surely come before I leave as well. I hope.

Jours vingt-huit et vingt-neuf.

Jours vingt-huit et vingt-neuf. 28/9/10 et 29/9/10.

Bonjour à tous. Toutes? Tout? Je ne sais pas… I usually find the agreement/non-agreement rules for “all” to be really confusing..

Hoping to keep this quite brief. We’ll see if it actually happens.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. I went to my Histoire de la Langue Française class in the morning. Here’s a note for you non-French: classes do not start on time. In fact, I think it would be a pretty rare situation to have a professor show up on time, rather than 5-10 minutes late. That’s usually the case for my courses anyway, so maybe I’m just learning for some professors tardifs. The class really doesn’t seem too bad at all, until the professor asks us to come up with the 6 homophones that have the sound [SƐN]. Right, I can do that, because I can speak French and everything... Unimportant, she goes over all the answers anyway. Onward to the most embarrassing and awkward encounter I’ve had so far in France…

History of the French language ends by 1pm. I have my two translation courses at 1:30-3 and 3-4:30. Too short of a time to do much of anything, so instead I wandered to a generally open area and found a bench. A very cute French boy sat next to me. I definitely recognized him. We kept glancing at each other strangely. I sat there for 10 minutes, trying to convince myself I should just say something because I was positive he was in my translation courses, he was just so familiar. 10 minutes, I told myself I might as well go for it because if I didn’t, it’d be pretty awkward to walk to class next to each other after having sat there in silence for all that time, and also because it’s France. Where better to try new things, like being outgoing? (Haha. Ha.)

“Pardon, mais, est-ce que tu as des cours traduction?”

“….Non..”

PANIC.

Yeah, I tried to explain how he resembled someone I knew, that I thought he was in my class, he really seemed familiar. In French. I think I failed pretty hard. I tried to excuse myself and say I was sorry, but I’m not very good with speaking French. So he asked what language I spoke.

“Anglais.”

“Ay speek een-gleesh.”

ADORABLE. So then I tried to quickly re-explain in English that I had thought he was in my classes, etc, etc. Then he tried to introduce himself.

“Je m’appelle aowuehvoauwe.”

“Pardon?”

“awecoahwet.”

“…quoi?”

“…awoureghofauwe.”

“Euhh, comment ca s’écrit?”

“Koo. Oo. Euh. En. Tay. Ee. En.”

“………………………………………………………….”

Finally, my dear readers, it clicked.

“Ohhh, comme ‘Quentin’ en anglais?”

“Oui.”

In my defense, he had been speaking with his hand covering his mouth the whole time. Plus, just in case you’ve never studied French … the pronunciation of “Quentin” in French and in English are very, very different.

We talked very briefly about what year we were in, with me stuttering all over the place and looking like a tomato. He asked if I had a course right now, and I glanced down at my watch: It was 1:25 and I was not entirely sure I could make it back to the room for my translation classes without getting lost. (More on that in a few sentences…) I tried to tell him that I had class at 1:30, but couldn’t remember the hour in 24-hour time, let alone in French, so I panicked and told him in the USA we just call it “one”. He kind of nodded and then I said I had to go and I thanked him profusely for having talked to me. Then I turn and practically ran away. Smoooooooth.

Really, though, in retrospect, all I can do is laugh at the entire experience. Very embarrassing, very awkward, very funny. He certainly was extremely nice to have sat there on the bench and talked with me (and tolerated my terrible French stuttering and mumbling and mistakes) when he could have just said “non” and turned the other way, or even left. Despite my absolute positivity that I recognized him from somewhere (which was apparently false), I’m really hoping I’m just crazy and I didn’t recognize him; if I run into him again, I think I might crawl under a rock and die.

Yes, yes, off I went to my translation courses. Close to them, at least. I got lost and panicky. The buildings here are ridiculously confusing and have completely illogically numbered rooms. Not cool, Lille 3 administration… I made it to class just in time, but then again, why had I worried? Most of the students were there, but the teacher didn’t arrive until several minutes after I had. Both classes weren’t too exciting but not terribly boring either. Ended up with a massive headache at the end, however.

Oh indeed, I’m sick. Ill. Headcold. Nose keeps changing from runny to stuffy every few hours and I’ve had a few headaches. Nothing unbearable, but it makes me angry to be sick. I was moping in my room about my illness when Cindy knocked on the door to ask me to show her the laundry room. I happily obliged, after jokingly blaming me for my nose and headache (“Erasmuflu”, as Vikki called it. It’s certainly nothing abnormal, probably just being around so many new people and exchanging germs, etc, etc, just as happens every school year.) In the laundry room, we found Laurent, a boy from York in England who studies at Lille I. We spent some time talking to him. I had to struggle not to laugh aloud when he said to “go past the car park and cross the motorway”, though.

Can’t remember anything else from the rest of the evening. Woke up and went to my Diachronie de l’anglais class. So awesome. Really love it. Basically a history of the English language. Everyone who lived in Britain until the modern-day English really sucked at defending themselves. Basically asked to be invaded. Really. They did. The Celts who were there around 500AD invited in the Angles and Saxons on into the country to defend them since they were so wimpy, but apparently hadn’t considered the possibility of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes wanting to just take over the entire landmass and purge the whole area of Celts… Right, but English is super cool and so is its history! BAM!

Wandered back to my room, feeling rather congested, and then met up with Rosalind. We went to this nice little café with grey and purple walls and had almond flavored bubble tea and these ham+mushroom+some-sort-of-spread sandwiches. Luckily for Rosalind, she only had to say “la même chose” after the waiter tried (unsuccessfully) to hide his smile as I ordered in French. Overall, satisfying lunch and bubble tea is neat. We grabbed our bank cards at the bank, just afterwards sadly realizing we haven’t received our stipends so our accounts are completely empty. We stopped at the post office so I could mail a thank-you out to one of my friends and so Rosalind could send some postcards. Then we hit the Tabac so I could try and buy a timbre fiscale for my immigration stuff, but they didn’t appear to have any. Thought about getting metro passes on the way home, but it was more than a bit crowded, so we left.

Crashed in my room. Had an omelette for dinner, nomnomnom. Plans to go to a meeting about Tandem, the conversational partner course, register in the CRL, and maybe stop by the Katie-Georgie-Laura residence, because Georgie invited me over for some soup. I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow or Friday. We’ll see what I feel like doing. Ulysse trip to Paris on Saturday. Hoping I’ll be over this cold by then.

I think that’s everything. Tout. Tous. Toutes? Tout. It must be tout, right? Ahhh, well…

Oh, and so. Today is Wednesday, September 29, 2010. I arrived in Lille exactly 4 full weeks ago. It feels like it’s been forever. It feels comfortable and routine and normal, generally. It feels like home.

Bonne nuit. <3

Jours Dix-neuf, Vingt, Vingt et un, Vingt-deux, Vingt-trois, et Vingt-quatre.

Jours Dix-neuf, Vingt, Vingt et un, Vingt-deux, Vingt-trois, et Vingt-quatre. 19/9/10-24/9/10.

Turns out, I’m really awful at this blog thing. Or at least updating regularly. I really have been trying to do so since Wednesday, but things came up, then there was a malfunction and my video didn’t upload (to be fair, it was 33 minutes so I’m sure none of you would’ve watched anyway…), and I just haven’t felt like typing a ton of information out. So now I’m going to start. At 1am. Awesome. Let’s do thissss.

Sunday, the 19^th, Rosalind and I met up to go to the Wazemmes Market, which was mainly overwhelming, a sort of mini-Braderie. Lots of food for sale at stands, but I really don’t know food prices well enough to decide if it’s a good deal, and the amount of people shouting really intimidated me, donc je n’ai acheté rien. After Wazemmes wandering, we meandered down a pretty long street, stopping in a cheese shop and a chocolaterie where Rosalind bought this hefty meringue dipped in chocolate. Took a nice little break sitting at the fountain in Place de la République. We were early for the tour of l’Église Saint-Maurice, and instead discovered that the Chambre de Commerce was open to the public. We went inside. Good decision.

We went on a guided tour. Poor decision. The tour guide was short, mumbled, and was pretty reminiscent of Wormtail from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Our tour group was well over 50 people. I barely caught a few audible words of French, and instead made sure I turned and looked in the same direction as the rest of the group when there was some movement.. Eventually, Rosalind and I split off from the group and decided to take some pictures on our own. Second good decision. Please enjoy these photos:

(Hey, here I am!)

(I really liked the sun on the building. :) Place Charles de Gaulle.)

(NikeLille. Barca? I don't understand why Barcelona in Lille...)

Having had success with self-touring/photojournaling in the Chambre de Commerce, we decided to do the same around l’Église Saint-Maurice, at least until the guided tour was meant to start. Walking slowly up the paths and getting so close to the woodwork and oil paintings at a leisurely, appreciative pace, occasionally making comments to one another, and basically staring wide-eyed at everything in the building from as many angles as we could find before sitting in teeny wooden chairs and basking in the calm of the church, whispering (as quietly as possible) about art and religion and family. Best decision. No more words on the matter, just beauty (and occasionally the back of Rosalind - which is also beautiful, if you know what I’m sayinnnnnn’ ;) )

Monday, birthday day! Woke up, met other DEFI (the intensive –but now extensive- French course for international students) students downstairs at 9:30, as per usual! Not per usual, Cindy mentioned that she’d been creepin’ pretty heavily on my facebook profile and discovered my music tastes were quite up to par. In fact, she very happily noted that I listed Interpol as a musical interest and invited me to come along to the Interpol concert at l’Aéronef (http://www.aeronef-spectacles.com/ ) on Tuesday evening with her and a friend of hers who is studying in Paris. DEFI class wasn’t too bad overall, and I managed to do well on my first written assignment. Valeria, an Italian girl in my class who is hilariously funny and loud kept trying to sing me “Happy Birthday” on our way to the Centre de Ressources en Langues (Language Resource Center) on campus. On my break between classes, I returned home, grabbed some lunch, searched for Interpol tickets online (none available, sadly) and then mentally prepared to go to my first ever Farsi class, and my first class for Arabic in France.

Farsi? Pretty damn cool. I mean, so, we’re only halfway through the alphabet, but it was still pretty cool. They basically took the Arabic alphabet and made some adjustments and streamlined some varied sounds and then added some own new letters for new sounds. Super interesting. Arabic? Absolutely terrifying. Sarah is taking the class as well, though she has a full year of Arabic study more than I do and just spent 8 weeks in Jordan this summer. We walked in, sat down, and the professor asked us to read through a short story aloud, each and every single one of us. Hello, feelings of inadequacy. It was insanely difficult, especially as Sarah and I read first and second, respectively. The following four readers were most likely heritage speakers and blew through the text wonderfully, making me feel even worse. Some of the other classmates were about the same level as I, struggling to pronounce words, taking big pauses, and making hesitant sounds. Somehow, though the reading of the text took up about 85% of our 2 hour class time, the teacher turned to the subject of the Algerian school system, then Israel/Palestine/Zionism/Judaism/Abraham having two wives/all kinds of things. In French. Yeah, because my classes are taught in French, and sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming. Two boys in our class went off and discussed, in very, very quick French, I might add, some of those subjects. Sarah and I couldn’t keep up, oh well. After class, I told the professor I’d never actually learned the case endings and I’d only had one year of Arabic at Iowa, but he said he’d have handouts on grammar and things, not to worry.

(Hay, it's my birfdaaaaay!)

So yeah, right, that was done by 8pm, and Sarah and I headed over to Place Rihour, the designated meeting place for my birthday extravaganzaaaaaaa! Not really an extravaganza, to be honest. Stephanie, a girl from Germany, ever so sweetly brought me a little box of chocolates and a pretty flower postcard and Georgie, Laura, and Katie made me a rather artistic card with my name misspelled. (Oh, Georgie..) Upon reaching the baked potato restaurant, we saw it was closed. Heartbreak. Instead, we went to Hippopotamus and had a good time anyway.

Tuesday morning, I had my first Histoire de la Langue Française class, which wasn’t bad at all. The girl next to me was an Erasmus student, and, upon my telling her I came from the US, immediately switched into English, telling me how happy she would be to talk to me in English. “Non, noooonn. Je dois parler français..” “Oh, but I can speak French or English, as long as I don’t speak Italian!” “Oui, d’accord, mais moi.. Je ne veux paaaas parler anglais!” “But I can speak English!” “Mais je suis venue en France pour parler français!” She really didn’t get it, I swear, that’s probably a word-for-word replay of my conversation with her…

Translation classes? Complete debacle. En bref, the professor of the French-English translation course was not pleased that 15 anglophone Erasmus/ISEP students showed up to her already full class and proceeded to tell us that we should probably find a different section of the class and get out of hers and that we would all fail the English-French translation course if we tried to take it, so we might as well just drop altogether. Pleasant and welcoming, n’est-ce pas? Right, well, I’m still taking the two translation courses, my credits should be okay as long as I do pass in the French-English course, and I really don’t want to go on and on about all the confusion/difficulty.

I came home, at the time upset about the confusion/difficulty I was experiencing, and left a message for Cindy saying I was sorry, but I didn’t think I would come to the Interpol concert. Cindy did not receive my message. She showed up at my door at 6:45, wondering why I hadn’t met her in the lobby at 6:30 like we planned! I felt guilty for abandoning her to go alone (her friend from Paris in fact couldn’t make it, and so I was going to buy her ticket and go with Cindy instead), having a crap day, and instead decided I’d go to the concert and try and forget about my dissatisfaction. On the metro, we ran into our friend Gaz (Gareth) from England. When we got off the metro, a lady stopped me and Cindy to ask if we were English. Turns out, she was wanting an English speaking nanny for her young son. She gave me her business card and some information. (I replied to her via email today, hopefully I’ll hear back from her soon and she’ll want me to do it?!) Anyway, the Interpol concert was great, after the hour and a half of standing in a crowded room of sweaty, smoking or drinking people talking about American and German stereotypes, trying to do a British accent and speaking some strange mixed version of French and English with Cindy. Very mixed crowd – I was stuck behind a tall, older man with gray hair. Really great though, am very glad I went.

Wednesday morning brought with it my Diachronie de l’anglais course. Read: History of the English language. SO great. I loved it. My primary professor is very amiable and funny, and the secondary professor seems really nice as well. I stayed quiet for about half of the class before we were discussing the Old English word “cwaeth” and what it may have turned into for Modern English. After a bit of silence from the class, I finally offered up my own sentiments: “I think it resembles the words ‘quoth’ and ‘quote’.” Basically saying, “Hello, I am American and I speak English.” Everyone turned and stared at me for a good 12 seconds before the professors nodded in agreement. I spoke with Professor Lemmens after class and we ended up talking about my being Pennsylvanian but going to Iowa. Mais quelle coïncidence! He spent a year in Dubuque, Iowa for high school? What is it with this place? Brian from York, Raashnie from East Stroudsburg, those girls from Juniata, and now my professor spent a year in Iowa? Ridiculous coincidences, if you ask me…

I went on a quick shopping trip to buy some fruits, made some tuna with tomatoes and an apple for lunch, soup and baguette for dinner.

(Nomnomnom..)

Spent the rest of the day in my room, chatting with people online and relaxing after the busy first few days of the week.

Thursday, I continued to relax in my room until Christine mentioned taco night at the lovely little house of Georgie, Katie, and Laura. The three English girls have been nothing but generous and welcoming to us, having us over for tea or lunch or dinner, just to chat. So sweet. They’re wonderful people. Anyway, the idea was to go cook them a meal for being so great. Jeremiah had grand schemes for making delicious little cakes, and so Lauren, Sarah, and Christine spent forever (read: 45 minutes) inside Auchan getting food and alcohol for the taco night while Jeremiah and I stayed outside on a bench and chatted. Though Thursday was the day of strikes in France (more revolt against changing the age for retirement), we had no problems using the metro and getting into the Marbrerie suburb to their house. We spent hours there, cooking, talking, laughing, drinking, listening to music, viewing photos of cute boys with big noses (ahem), eating, washing dishes, and having a great time overall. Brian and I talked in the kitchen for a while about band and PMEA. Had I made region band my junior year, we most likely would have met there. I’m telling you, these coincidences are seriously weirding me out. We also talked about shoo-fly pie and Hershey Park. It’s nice to be reminded of home when you’re so far away, to know that someone understands and can feel the same way about certain things as you do. Very comforting. After some of us who had been drinking a bit more than others (ahemmmmm, you know who you are) had calmed down enough, we came back home to Triolo unscathed, despite some verbal harassment from some men at a metro stop.

I overslept today. By a lot. Until like 2pm. For some reason, I decided to stay up until almost 4am? I don’t know what I was thinking. Missed an apparently pointless meeting, and received two birthday cards: one from my parents, one from a long-time friend online. They both made me feel special and happy. I really did spend the rest of my day in my room, organizing my school things, working on assignments, studying, sitting some more, eating, listening to music, singing as loudly as I dare without knowing the acoustic limitations of my little room.

Tomorrow, by which I mean Saturday despite it being 2am here, there are vague initiatives to go out to a bar or two and drink and/or dance? I’m not sure if I’m feeling it or if I want to spend the metro tickets/money on alcohol, but we’ll see how things go. Sunday will be Rosalind’s BIG BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST! Woo! Then I’ve plans to cook a pasta dinner with Cindy, Anna (another German girl I met in the kitchen), and Anna’s friend. Good stuff. Hopefully, I’ll update a little more frequently with smaller posts. I know it’s a pain to read this much, really, because it’s a pain to type this much. I really want to be dedicated with details and stories, for my own personal enjoyment later on, so it’s worth it, I believe.

In parting, I’d like to leave a song again. Maybe I’ll make it a regular thing. Come back for my next update to see if that’s the case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wrEPodMI0&feature=channel

Bisous.