Our aspirations are wrapped up in books.

Bonjour, tout le monde. (I've always found it a little funny how the French say "everyone"... it's "all the world"... haha. Over exaggerate much?)

So I hope everyone is doing well. I got sick with a stomach bug a few days ago, but I am feeling much better now, and thought I'd write another blog entry. I'm going to try for at least two a week, even though I really doubt all that many people read this. For my own sake I think it's good to keep at least my parents updated, plus it's good to write things down to have for future reference.

As of right now, I am busier than you could possibly imagine. I have to write out a resumé and a cover letter in order to do this internship at a high school in town... I would be helping out teaching an English class. This seems like a really cool opportunity, and I'm really looking forward to it, I just didn't realize we'd have to have our stuff together quite so early. We were literally given the information on Friday and apparently it was expected... yesterday. Eesh. Of course, in typical French fashion I didn't find this out until today.

I have resigned myself to the general confusion that is my existence in a foreign country.

So, my plan for the evening is as follows: dinner with Marie-Claude, clean room, pack bag for tomorrow, make tea, sit down and write my resumé and cover letter, and finally put resumé and cover letter through antidote (genius French grammar-checking software... would not have survived this long without it).

...we'll see how much of it actually gets done. I have succumbed to French time... a.k.a. I take forever to do things that are of very little importance. Like eating. I don't think I'm capable of taking a meal in under and hour and a half anymore. Or sleeping. I definitely get at least 7 hours of sleep a night (at home I was lucky if it I got 5). Okay, well I guess it could be argued that eating and sleeping are of great importance, but not in proportion to how much time they take. You get my point.

Oh, classes. I promised I would talk about those, didn't I? I suppose I don't have too much to say about them. I am taking six classes here. That would be an absurd number in the states, but most of the classes here are only half credits, which is unbelievably frustrating when you're trying to make a schedule upon arrival in a foreign land. The classes I am taking are: Art History, Architecture of Toulouse, Methodology (a required Dickinson course that is less like a class and more like an enormous waste of my mortal life), French Political History of the 20th Century, Geography of France (which is less about terrain and more about people), and French/English Translation (the dark horse... it actually has turned out to be really fun so far).

Classes are good... somewhat different than I expected, given that I was told I'd be able to sit in the back of a large lecture hall and hide, never letting anyone know I was foreign (which, frankly, would be a luxury in my opinion). Unfortunately, I decided to take most of my classes at L'Institut Catholique de Toulouse, where most classes are only 30 to 40 students (larger than Dickinson, but incredibly small by France's public university standards). I have exposés (oral presentations) in all but one of my classes (the political history class, which is at L'Institut des Etudes Politiques de Toulouse, in which I can happily hide and quietly take notes). My geography class is more interactive than some classes I have had at Dickinson (all of the class talks all the time... and 85% of the time it's NOT personal conversations... haha).

Things are just generally different in classes here. First of all, syllubi don't exist. Plans? Never. Secondly, the bibliography they give you ranges from one full page to five full pages; books and articles abound. I haven't really figured out what use they are... I think they're given to us in case we are confused or we want supplementary readings, but if I'm being entirely honest, I'm pretty much constantly confused and given that I'm not really sure of the location of the library in either of the schools I am attending, I highly doubt I'm ever going to actually look at them. My mère d'accueil told me that the good students go straight from class to the library to check out the best books... I guess I'm not a good student.

Thirdly, we don't really have homework, per se. We have some little bits of homework for translation (which, I think, is a given), and methodology, being designed to consume as much of my time with the maximum amount of worthless busywork, has some things as well, but on the whole we basically just sit in class and take notes. I'm really worried that at the end of the semester I'm going to be buried under more work than I am capable of digging myself out of, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that now. The good news is, all I have to do is pass. The grades here aren't factored into my GPA given the cruel French grading system. Basically, it's a 20 point scale, and if you get a 12 it's really really good. Grades 17 through 20 are never assigned, and 13-16 are probably reserved for the natives. Only France would create a system in which foreigners don't have a chance of succeeding.

Well that's all I have to say for now. Oh! Except that Kim and I just bought tickets to London for the weekend after this one! I'm so excited. We'll be in London that weekend, and then spend the following weekend in Paris. Just, you know, a little jaunt around the globe. I cannot wait.

À très bientôt!

bryn.