End of Week One

It has been kind of a tough weekend over here. I hope this does not become a recurring theme, since I am trying to stay positive, but I really do not speak any French whatsoever. I think the biggest thing I have learned so far is that good grades in French classes do not correlate in the slightest with an ability to speak this language. I can write papers, read books, order dinner, whatever, but I cannot carry on a conversation or watch TV.

Friday was fine: it was the birthday of one of the kids in my program, so we went to his (French) friend's apartment to celebrate. The Harvard lightweight rower and Yale coxswain who are also in my program and I talked about rowing for over an hour and then we all bumbled along in half English, half French with the kids there. The metro closes at around 1:30 here on the weekends, so it was an adventure trying to make it home (the last train leaves at 1:30, so even if you leave wherever you are at 1:00, if you have to change trains a few times, you can end up out of luck). I made it home fine, fortunately.

Last night was more difficult because my host parents had friends over. They invited me to eat with them, which I thought was strange at the time, but I accepted and found out that my conversational skills are poor at best. Over the course of the three-hour evening, I understood maybe a third of the conversation in the first hour, and 5 or 10% thereafter. It is so exhausting to try to understand French spoken by people who have had a few glasses of wine and are speaking rapid-fire that by the end of it, I just sat quietly and stared into space.

Then, tonight, I accidentally took a nap (I was reading and then all of a sudden I wasn't) and woke up about half an hour before we usually had dinner. I wandered into the living room and watched the news with my host dad for a little while until finally he asked what I was doing about dinner. I immediately came up with a story about meeting a friend at 9:00 and said I was just watching TV until I left. As it turns out, our host families only have to provide us with dinner five nights a week, so I guess I am on my own for weekends. Of course, there was no friend to meet, so I wandered around the Latin Quarter and Notre Dame and had a crepe until I thought I had been gone long enough.

There have absolutely been highlights: we had a field trip Saturday morning to L'Institut du Monde Arabe, whose principal highlight is its roof, which overlooks the Seine and Notre Dame. Absolutely gorgeous. We also went to a boulangerie this morning and had a pastry tasting, which I obviously enjoyed. And my host dad and I were watching TV the other day (they are really big on American cop shows dubbed in French, but unfortunately I have been unable to find Law & Order as of yet) and I found that he loves rugby. I know nothing about rugby in English, so his attempts to explain the rules to me in French were somewhat over my head, but I was able to establish when things were going poorly because this older, immaculately dressed man whom I've never seen take off his shoes or his sport jacket would throw his hands in the air and scream, "MERDE!" Never a dull moment.

Anyway, we start to pick our classes tomorrow, so things can only improve, I hope. Plus my dad is coming on Saturday, as is one of my friends from New York. A few familiar faces will be welcomed.

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