Gearing Up

Things are pretty good right now. I had my first classes today (I was supposed to have a class yesterday, but due to a complete inability to understand time in this country, I missed it...it's one of my back-ups and it's on Monday morning, so I think I'm going to drop it anyway). If all goes as planned, I will be taking Rome and the World (Tuesday 9-10, 11-1), A Cultural History of the Middle Ages (Tuesday 10-11, Wednesday 2-4), Germany from 1945 to 1990 (Wednesday 4-5, Tuesday 2-4), and Louis XIV's France (Wednesday 6-7, Monday 2-4). This isn't set in stone because the first time is a CM (basically a lecture) and the second time is a TD (basically a discussion section), but you have two or three choices of TD and you request them at the first CM and they assign you. You may have noticed that if I get my first choices, I have one class on Mondays, four classes on Tuesdays, and three classes on Wednesdays...and nothing Thursdays or Fridays. And I only start class before noon on Tuesday. I am going to have a tough time getting back to five days of class a week at Trinity.

The first Rome class was good; the original professor seems to have decided on September 19 that he wanted to go on sabbatical in the US, so the new professor is a little bitter about that, but at least she articulates her bitterness slowly and clearly enough for me to understand. The Middle Ages class was pretty good, although the professor is kind of old and he swallows his words. But I met a few kids (I pretty much guess which people are going to be the nicest and start asking them questions because I don't ever have any idea what is going on) and at the moment I am enough of a novelty to be amusing to them. So far, so good.

My father was here again last night (he finally left the country yesterday--just kidding, Dad!) and we had a last dinner at a pretty funky restaurant that made a lot of flavor-infused foam. Among other things, I ate some bok choy, which I'm told is a vegetable...clearly I am growing as a person. It was all delicious and the waiter told me that if his English were as good as my French, he would be happy. No one has ever said that to me before because EVERYONE'S English is better than my French, so it was overall a pretty good night.

I went to Brittany and Normandy with my program this weekend, which was great because the weather was amazing. There were people swimming in the English Channel in St-Malo, the first town we went to. It was warm enough that we walked along the beach barefoot, which was a nice change from cold, rainy Paris. Sunday, we stopped at Mont St-Michel on the way home. I was there...six years ago, I guess, with my high school, but all I remember about it is that I was sick and miserable and the stone walls absorbed all the heat and it was March so there wasn't any heat anyway. As it turns out, it's a pretty cool town, so I'm glad I went back. The tide changes are huge, and it was low tide when we were there, so even from the top of this mountain, we couldn't even the see the water, but apparently it comes in at a rate of one meter per second. That's about a fifth as fast as our varsity eight is supposed to go, to put it in perspective.

Also, I made what may turn out to be the most important discovery I will make in France. They have an amazing chain of stores here called Picard, which sell only frozen food. Gross, right? No! It's amazing. They have every possible food item, frozen. It's divided into sections like a regular grocery store, so you can buy your fruits, vegetables, meat, "flying things" (I like that translation better than "fowl"), fish, shellfish, pasta, potato items, soups, desserts, quiches, snacks, and obviously ice cream...everything. I had fettucine carbonara for lunch, and I've been told that the chocolate cake is incredible, which is rare praise for something frozen in a country that eats everything fresh. That will have to wait for another day, though.

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