3rd round of classes...

…and more interesting cultural differences. So today in my sociology of the city class, we’re going through the article she gave us to read, going through each paragraph and making sure we have the main ideas. Our assignment had been to summarize each paragraph in a sentence or quote, so she was asking us for our suggestions and giving her own. This was great for me, as the subject matter was at times tricky enough itself without the French to weigh it down – but I guess it might have been rather boring for a French student, because an hour into the class, some guy raises his hand, and says more or less: “Is this… all we’re doing today? Are we going to read the whole thing?” (pause.) “Because… I mean, I read this (or maybe he said could read this) on my own.” The teacher, rather than yell at him for being disrespectful, explained her reason for going through it rather slowly, saying she was trying to make sure we understood the method of reading a text, that next time she’d just have us do it on our own, and that she was sorry if he thought she was wasting his time. I think it was left at that for the moment, but he did get up about a minute later, making three other people get up in order for him to get out and creating a bunch of noise, seemingly to make a phone call. My mouth was probably still gaped open at that point…

Other than that, the class was really good and interesting, and I even raised my hand and offered an answer once – which apparently was good because she asked me to repeat it so everyone else could write it down! Woohoo!

Drawing class was also good – which I take with Jules, Susannah, and 10 or so French people, from one high school kid to men and women in their fifties (or so, I’d say). Today we had a live model and she was great, definitely the best model I’ve drawn – very interesting poses. Maybe I was just sitting in a good spot. Who knows.

The next day I had my film class… um…
(a) we watched movies for nearly the whole time again, with him talking for only about a half hour (it’s a three hour class, like the others – only once a week)
(b) He hands back my “fiche pédagogique” to me which I had to ask him fill out for my program; it has space for him to write out what work I will be required to do for the semester and what dates – he has written: “ORAL, MAI. DST, MAI.” =oral exam in may, test in class may. No subject material indicated whatsoever, no dates indicated. Sweet. My program’s going to love this.
(c) He says that there is no class next week… because he is sick?? I could swear I heard the word “malade”.

And all throughout the day I continued my ongoing search for bathrooms. They are hard to find, and with toilet paper? That’s another thing.

Another day in a French university!