Jours Huit, Neuf, Dix, Onze, et Douze.

Jours Huit, Neuf, Dix, Onze, et Douze. 8/9/10, 9/9/10, 10/9/10, 11/9/10, et 12/9/10.

Bonjour, bonjour. Salut. Ça fait longtemps.

Life has been busy, I have been lazy. Those are really my only two excuses.

My French class has officially dropped down to 2 hours per week, chaque lundi, and I’m pretty happy about it. The course itself is difficult. My confidence in French has been shot down pretty hard and fast. We worked with headsets, complete with headphones and microphones, everyone looking super fine as we listened to our teacher give us two sentences which we then had to turn back into one sentence using the subjunctive. (“Il ne sais pas lire. C’est étonnant.” “C’est etonnant qu’il ne sache pas lire.”) The exercises passed far too quickly and were too difficult for me to even get out of my mouth, honestly. Really sort of a slap in the face, to be honest. We turned in a written résumé (summary) of an article we read, and Martine told me that mine was pretty good, but it feels like a small consolation. Listening comprehension, reading, and writing have always been strong suits of mine, so I guess I really haven’t changed much… Anyway, on the whole, the class is fairly discouraging and I feel as though all the other students have been studying longer or harder than I have. I just need to keep telling myself it’s alright, and things will be better in time. Un peu d’espoir, s’il vous plaît:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPS1JPQ6jo

(Okay, so it's not quite the same subject matter, but the title is "A Bit of Hope"..)

I mentioned Ulysse last time, and I signed up to go on the day trip to Paris as well as the international student soirée. Exciting stuff. I’ve been meeting so many people from so many places; it’s hard to see everyone. We’ve made some pretty stable groups of friends, and I don’t want to end up neglecting some for others. Now we mainly go out in larger groups to shop or to explore or to go out and have drinks (Oh ho! It’s true! Read on, my dear…readers…), so I’m sort of looking forward to the coming comfort/ease in going out on my own after I’ve really gotten used to the area and when I don’t have classes at the same time as others. I still would love to have lunch with my friends, but I’m really looking forward to making French/Lillois friends, specifically because of the added bonus of having to speak French with them, even if I do sound like an idiot.

Speaking of speaking French (my writing skills seem to have gone downhill..), I received a phone call on Thursday night from none other than my lovely French penpal from Pau, Julien. It was kind of hilarious and I was mainly really embarrassed. I don’t think we’ve ever successfully managed to speak to each other via skype or MSN vocally, so talking on the phone was interesting. I tried to use my French, really, I did, but it ended pretty quickly and I used mostly English instead. Julien’s really great with English anyway, so it wasn’t a problem except for reinforcing my lack of courage in speaking French. I asked him if he’d send me a present for my birthday in French though, so I guess it wasn’t a complete loss. ;]

My cooking skills are on the rise, bien que mes talents à l’écrit baissent. I went to Auchan with Lauren and Raashnie, where we also ran into Victoria (one of my new English friends) and Anne (a new friend from Holland). I bought some rigatoni (read: pasta), canned sauce (there were so many kinds and I just sort of picked the cheapest), some dry soups (just add water? My kind of cooking!), ham and cheese (I don’t have anything witty to say about them), and an umbrella (they charged me an extra euro, but I didn’t want to go back and say something once I realized. Thursday evening, I sat down at my desk and pulled and pulled on the bag of dry pasta to no avail. I pulled some more and was met with (partial) success: my bag ripped completely open and shot pasta all over my room and my floor, but I had indeed opened it. After cleaning it up, torn between laughing at myself and wanting to hit my head on my desk, I marched down to my kitchen and started making my pasta, determined to make up for my embarrassing pasta-flying-all-over-my-room debacle minutes before. While down in my kitchen, I ran into Assim again, who told me to wait (“Attends!”) and then returned with a large bag of things for me to have, including a plastic container for leftovers, two adorable flower design plates, two mugs for coffee/tea/cocoa, a bunch of silverware, a towel, a whisk, cayenne pepper, salt, hot cocoa mix, and mushroom soy sauce. I haven’t really put much of it to use yet, but I have some big plans for that soy sauce (like just buying some rice). Anyway, my pasta endeavor was pretty darn successful, if I do say so myself! Tasty, tasty. And I was even able to use that plastic container to keep my leftovers. :) I really should’ve taken a picture, but I forgot. Oops. Friday night, I made myself a really delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and this afternoon I cooked myself a perfect egg over easy with a slice of cheese melted on top. I’mma be giving Iron Chef Murimoto a run for his money (yen?) soon, you all just wait and see.

And indeed, Friday was an interesting evening. I don’t remember exactly what happened after class, but I did take a nap for a short while (Went to bed at 3:30. Woke up at 4. My alarm was set for 5. Did I go back to sleep? Yes. Did I wake up quite alarmed, sleepily, and angry at the world when the alarm went off at 5 and then regret my decision? Yes.) I tried to decide what to wear, and after Christine’s confirmation that my pink dress looked okay, I went for it and got dressed up in a dress for the first time in a very, very long time that I can remember. Like, I really can’t remember the last time I willingly wore a dress for something…

(Ma robe! Elle a des poches! :D! And yeah, that is a very blurry double thumbs up on the right.)

Right so, Christine, Lauren, Jeremiah, Sarah, Rosalind and I headed out to the Triolo metro to get to Gare Lille-Flandres. Happily full from my grilled ham and cheese, I chose to wait and be on the lookout for Laura, Katie, and Georgie to arrive while some of the others ate in a small sandwich café place. We moved on to Les Trois Brasseurs, a microbrewery and restaurant just across from the train station, after passing by Gaz (Gareth. English. “Tall boy with the stripey jumper.”), who had just gotten a bunch of McDonald’s and was heading back to his friend’s “flat” (haha) to eat before coming out to meet us. I had my first beer in Les Trois Brasseurs. Rosalind, Georgie, and Laura helped me pick out what to try. It was certainly interesting. For some reason, I hadn’t expected it to be carbonated (last night on Skype dad basically asked me what in the world I thought all the foamy stuff at the top was, and I realized I was an idiot). It was alright though. I tried some wine that Rosalind had, and Christine’s as well. Victoria and Anne showed up a bit later, as well as Brian. After Les Trois Brasseurs, we decided to move on to Rue Solferino, the apparent street full of bars. I forget which one we actually went into, but Brian promised it was a good one. It was a bit of a lose-lose situation, to be honest, as the outside patio area was full of smokers and the inside was disgustingly hot and sweaty. I managed anyway, tried some of Jeremiah’s kir, I think, and Christine’s chandy? I think that’s what it was. I really don’t remember. Gaz met up with us there, and brought along Kirsty, ma voisine in our intensive French course who is from Manchester in England, and another girl I still haven’t actually met. We split up shortly thereafter as the metro shuts down at 12:30am, and there was no way we were staying out until 5:30am to catch the metro when it started up again like Gaz suggested. Metro trip was a success and we learned not to go in the shady entrance to the République des Beaux Arts station. Upon arrival home, despite being extra super tired, I ended up staying up until nearly 2am talking with friends on skype and facebook. In all, it was an excellent night full of fun and conversation with our friends. :]

Saturday morning, I woke up, showered and dashed out to the Hôtel de Ville metro station to meet my penpal, Camille. We met probably a year ago almost on this penpal site (www.interpals.net) and had been sending some letters and things back and forth through the mail. We met with two of her Erasmus friends from her school, and found a Chinese restaurant back in the general area I had been the night before. France has this nifty thing called a “ménu” where you can order from a choice of appetizers, main courses, side dishes, and a dessert for a set price. For 6€, I had a beansprout omelette, black mushrooms and beef with Cantonese rice, and an almond cake. I took a few pictures of the city on our way back to Gare Lille-Flandres:

(Musée des Beaux Arts)

(Camille, Kayan, me, and Jennifer)

I decided to leave them and hit the huge Euralille mall next to the Gare Lille-Flandres, where Christine, Lauren, Laura, Jeremiah, Georgie, Raashnie, Sarah, and later Stephanie were all shopping. I mainly browsed and talked with everyone. I’m really trying to avoid spending money as much as possible so that I can afford to go to Israel for the summer, and I feel like every little bit will help. It was pretty enjoyable all the same, until we tried to take the metro back home. Something was blocking the paths, apparently, and we had to wait a decent amount of time before the trains were running again. Everyone was crammed together waiting, and then some employee people came to regulate the process of getting on and off the train itself. We all completely missed the first train, and as the second one came, we were determined to make it on. However, some little old French lady practically shoved me out of the way and while all my friends (Christine, Lauren, Laura, Georgie, and Sarah) made it onto the train, the old lady and I didn’t make it. :[ I got shoved into the next train without hitch, and mainly appreciated a cute boy in a black shirt + black cardigan combo until I got off at my stop. Donc, j’ai découvert l’écueil des transports publiques.

I reheated my leftover pasta for dinner, tried to do part of my homework for French class, skyped with my parents, watched Disney’s La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast) in French on youtube, talked to some friends, supported the Iowa Hawkeyes from afar (Go Hawks, Beat State! In the past tense, actually, since we did beat slaughter Iowa State..), and eventually went to sleep.

Today, I’ve done practically nothing. I saw Cindy, a German girl from my French class, downstairs in the kitchen as I made myself that delicious cheesey egg and jam on bread breakfast. I finished my French homework (tentatively). I’m planning on maybe trying to study some French (somehow) and Arabic (I really need to) or watching another Disney movie in French tonight as well. (La Petite Sirène? Je pense que oui.)

As an actual school/academic note, it turns out that basically none of the classes begin on the 13^th as I thought/was told. I’ll have just my French class on Monday for two hours. In order to actually find out the time and location of classes, it’s going to be necessary (Awehrawe, I really just started writing “Il est nécessaire que…”) to go to each department and ask the secretary for different time sheets and things. I don’t really know where the departments are, or to exactly which departments my courses belong. I think there are small meetings in different departments for the new students throughout the week, but I’m not sure if we’re obligated/supposed to go to them, as the communication here is pretty bad. I was warned, I know. I know I was told that the French are extremely bureaucratic, terrible with communication, inefficient, all those terrible things that I do not approve of as an extremely efficient, meticulous, fast-paced workaholic American… Oooh, also. I was going to audit Hebrew, but then I found out that I can actually take Farsi/Persian here! How awesome is that?! So I think I’ll audit Farsi instead, and just hope against hopes I can go to Israel and start Hebrew this summer. I’m pretty sure my Arabic professor back at Iowa specializes in Farsi in all actuality, so I think he’d be more than happy to help me continue to learn or give me some extra things to do once I’m back at Iowa.

Back at Iowa. So far away.

(Very nice hand-drawn additions, if I do say so myself..)

As much as I love Iowa and miss my friends and my school, I don’t want to think about going back. I don’t want to think about leaving.

So I won’t.

And in the meantime, until I post again, I’mma Be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRVkLsCHlYw&feature=grec_index

<3

Jours Six et Sept.

Jours Six et Sept. 6/9/10 et 7/9/10.
Monday morning began our intensive French classes before the start of the regular school year. Christine and I happened to place into the same level, along with fellow ISEP student, Jeremiah. We’ve met a few other classmates, but it doesn’t really help to make the class periods pass any quicker. 9am to 1pm with one break is still pretty unpleasant, even if our instructor looks like Mrs. Seltzer from 7th grade Health class and Oscar from Uruguay interrupts with strange comments pretty frequently. After class on Monday, a ton of the international students were shoved into this awesome café which is run by the organization for international students called Ulysse, but more about Ulysse later. A few people made small presentations/introductions about the sports available to us this week and then for the entire year. It was at this time that we met most of our new friends from the UK (I think) and met our Canadian ISEP student, Lauren. After sports stuff, Christine, Jeremiah, Lauren, and I had lunch with Georgie, Laura, Katie, and Charlotte (Maybe? I think? I’m really sorry if you read this at some point and I’ve gotten your name wrong.. :/) at a little place near to the school. I’m on a tuna craving, seriously. I had wanted it last week, and since I got it at Hippopotamus on Saturday night, I just want it every meal. The food was good, and we had fun getting to know one another a bit more before we ISEP students had to head out and meet our coordinatrice, Isabelle. We didn’t meet Isabelle right away actually, but had to go sort of monetary things with Marine (Or is it Marie-anne?) and then we eventually made it back to Isabelle, set up our bank accounts (which will be ready for operation sometime next week) and then had to fill out registration forms and hand over copies of passports and visas and too many things for me to keep track of, really. The meeting took about 4 hours. Though I wanted to come home and eat, I decided to stick with the 7 ISEP students and walk to the Centre Commercial V2 again (Don’t worry, I successfully avoided Auchan) to find some dinner. Rosalind, Raashnie, and I had some Chinese food, but their pricing per 100 grams really threw us off. Raashnie is the final ISEP student, hailing from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. (I consider it a small triumph. There’s also a guy named Brian who works with Ulysse.. In fact, I really have no idea what he does, but he’s very nice and welcoming… and he’s from Pennsylvania too, except closer to me, from around York. :) Pennsylvanians are clearly going to become as numerous as the Germans, Italians, and Spaniards here. Hah.) I guess if you were here, you’d understand that’s a joke. I suppose it’s mainly because they are three of the really big, populous countries bordering France, but I swear 50% of my French class is Italian, 30% is German, 15% is Spanish, and the remaining 5% of us come from other places… Anyway, had dinner, walked home. Via Skype, I was able to briefly speak to some of my relatives who had been over to celebrate Labor Day at my house.
This morning was more of French class, interrupted by a coffee debacle (Thanks a tonnnnn, Jeremiah, now my bag smells like coffee….) and then we had lunch again with Georgie, Katie, and Laura. More on UK students in a (hopefully) short video to wrap up the post. Following that, I tentatively picked a list of courses to take this fall with Isabelle’s assistance. So far, I’m looking at taking the equivalent of 12 credits in the US system, with this intensive French course (the one I’m in currently, which will go down to 2 hours once a week during the school year), Tandem (a sort of partner thing, where I’ll be paired with a native French speaker learning English), a dual set of English to French and French to English translation courses, a history of the French language course (taught in French, of course…), Arabic (though I’m unsure if I’ll be able to enter into their second year course, I’m really thinking about brushing up on what I learned last year..) and some sort of Ancient Egypt/Egyptian history/Egyptian religion course. I also think I might audit beginning Hebrew to be able to learn it without the stress of grading and credit transfer, but it really depends on how the rest of my courses go.

Oh, and I tried to send out my immigration forms and things at what I believed to be a post office (it wasn’t) and the lady told me to go somewhere else (a post office I don’t know how to get to) but probably not today since everyone is striking all over France. If you haven’t heard, the French government wants to raise the age at which one can retire/receive pension from 60 to 62 in an attempt to save money. I figure it sounds like a pretty decent idea, but the US already has the age set at 65. French people are pretty touchy about their lifestyles and that they have a lot of time off for vacation during the year, not as many hours in a work week, etc, etc, so I guess it’s not too ridiculous that they’re against this as well.

Sidenote: Ulysse at Lille is going to be great, I hope. I signed up today. They organize some parties, trips within France (Paris, Aix la Chappelle, Versailles, and Disneyland Paris) and even trips abroad to Brussels, Luxembourg, London, Amsterdam, Bruges, Cologne, Venice, and very possibly Prague. Organized trips for a set fee and with a set number of available spots to go. It sounds pretty cheap and pretty great to be able to have transportation figured out for us and to be able to go traveling with my new friends!

Here goes my video, I think it was a bit necessary, just to explain things quickly:




I hope you’re all enjoying reading my updates. They’re really entertaining to write, to be honest, and it’s quite nice to know someone is there reading from across the ocean, wanting to know what life is like here in Lille and how I’m adjusting.

A bientôt.