La France!: April 2011

Hello all!

Not much has happened this past week, so this will be a fairly short post. We have just finished our last official week of classes, which is both exciting and odd considering we are here for another 6 weeks. The upcoming week is when we make up any classes that were cancelled and not rescheduled during the regular school year. So although the 'last week of classes' is past, all but one of my classes will be meeting this week, one of which will meet twice.

As for the past week, it was mostly spent studying and attending class. I gave my fiche presentation on Jean-Paul Sartre on Thursday, which went pretty well overall. I think the professor disagreed on a few points with the author but to be honest I'm just happy that I am almost done with her course. I also had my exam for my French course, which also went pretty well. There were one or two parts that had me stumped (like subjunctive conjugation of recevoir...) but overall I think I did well and will end up with a good grade. I also did a lot of work on my paper for Sociology, which is due tomorrow and I finished and had corrected by my student mentor last night. I tried doing more work on my Centre Pompidou expose but a plan still eludes me. I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but she has a very specific requirement for the format of these exposes. Basically, they must be in the following format:

Problematique (Pose a question)

Introduction

A.
   i.
   ii.
B.
   i.
   ii.

Conclusion

Aside from allowing you to occasionally add a third major section or subsection, there is almost no wiggle room. In addition, whatever topics you choose for your sections have to follow a general chronology of the topic, which makes mine difficult because the entire project of the Centre covers about 8 years at most and the topic is actually the revolution of the Centre (but not after its construction, just how it in and of itself is revolutionary). Essentially, I currently feel like I know a lot about the Centre Pompidou while actually knowing little of what she will want me to say. But, now that I am finished with my Sociology paper I can give most of my attention to this expose. In addition to this, I also have a 5 page economics paper due on Friday, so it will be a busy week.

Despite all of my work, I am getting very excited about the following couple of weeks. After my class on Thursday (and turning in my paper to the office Friday morning) I will be officially on vacation for two weeks. So, on Saturday the 23 I am leaving for a trip to Amsterdam, where I will live with a friend from Beloit for about 5 days and then meet up with a couple people in Paris for two days before heading back to Rennes. I have already been told of several places I have to see while I am in Amsterdam including the Ann Frank house, the Van Gogh museum, the Red Light District (if only for a moment just to say I was there) and a park the name of which I am unsure how to spell. If you have any suggestions, let me know! Since I have already done most of the touristy things in Paris, I am going to try to visit some of the less popular attractions such as the cemetery where Oscar Wilde is buried and maybe just wander around and enjoy the city.

Once I get back from this trip, it will be back to work. Exams start the 9th of may, when I will have two more papers due. After that, I will take my last 5 exams and be completely done by the 18th or 19th of May (one professor does not know when his exam is...). Actually, I am not entirely sure because the system is somewhat confusing. Basically, each professor just chooses a 2 hour time slot in which they want to have our exam and send it to the office which coordinates that. Then that office posts the information. As it turns out, two of my exams are at the same time on the same day, and one of them is written so I cannot simply give my oral exam and proceed to wait my turn for the other course. This is apparently common because this happened with multiple courses, but I am just hoping that I will still be done this early so I won't need to drag out my stress for only one course. If I am done by the 19th, I am hoping to make a short trip (just a couple days) to the south of France to get some sun and see a different part of the country. We were thinking of doing Bordeaux or Aix-en-Provence, but again, if anyone has any (affordable) recommendations feel free to let me know.

So that is about all for this week. Something interesting has come to my attention recently so I will leave you with this fun anecdote. When I first arrived in January, I had to validate my visa through an office called the OFII. While there, they told us they would send us first a confirmation that our visas were validated (which came about 3 weeks later in the mail) and then eventually a letter telling us when we would have to go see a doctor for a chest x-ray (which would cost 55 euros, despite the physical I was "required" to get at home, and was never asked about), which I believe is to ensure that we do not have TB or some kind of deadly virus that would wipe out the country. As you may have already guessed, this letter has yet to come (knock on wood...). At this point, I don't think it would matter if it did come since I am leaving in 6 weeks, so I imagine I will not be getting any x-rays.

Anyway, I think I have filled my quota of complaining, French bashing, and updating for this week so I will leave you all for now. I will try to get a post in before I leave for Amsterdam, because I doubt I will be bringing my computer with me. If not, you will definitely hear about my trip following my return. Until next time, best wishes and happy easter if I do not get a chance to update you again before then!

Tom

I'm back!

I have once again completely missed my blog deadline, though this time it was not out of laziness but instead a lack of anything interesting. There was almost nothing that happened between the Wednesday that I posted and the following Sunday so I decided to leave the next post until today.

In the past week, I have again been working diligently to get all of my things together. Since my courses keep getting cancelled and rescheduled, nearly all of my work is now packed into the next two weeks. As a result, I have been having a hard time splitting up the amount of time I spend on each course. As you may expect, I have spent nearly all of my time working on my expose and fiche for the History and Civilization course because the professor does quite frighten me. It may seem difficult to understand that anyone could be so intimidated by a teacher in a foreign country who is supposed to be the one helping you learn and accommodate to the culture, so I will do my best to explain. Every time someone presents a fiche or an expose, she spends an equal amount of time telling them why it was not good enough (not incorrect or necessarily insufficient, but not what she would have done, thus not good enough). She is, literally, impossible to please. As one of the French students put it: every time you turn something in she repeatedly tells you why it was not what she would have done and why her way is better, until you finally get it exactly the way she would do it, which is when she says to you "That's plagiarism!". Surprisingly, it gets worse. In class on Tuesday she spent 20 minutes telling a girl who looked bored that she should leave if she didn't want to be here because she doesn't care if we show up and does not keep track of attendance (which is a lie). Then, on Thursday the first thing she said after a student gave his expose were the following: "I'm bored and kind of annoyed...". Granted, his presentation was imperfect, and needed improvement. But, as it happens, this was also the student who she admitted to giving a difficult topic (hand chosen because he arrived to school late after returning home to Scotland to take his fall semester exams) and proceeded to give absolutely no guidance on the subject. Whether or not he should have done better or she should have helped more is not really my problem, but instead that she was (and not just in this case, but in general) extremely rude. So, I think it is clear why my work for my more reasonable (and generally very helpful and nice) teachers has been put on the back burners.

Nevertheless, I have made some good progress on my fiche, one of my papers and my expose. My French exam is also this coming Thursday, which has me a bit worried but I am fairly confident I will do well. So, my past week has been spent almost entirely doing work. In order to ease the tension a bit, we decided to take a trip this weekend. We were initially planning to go on a day trip with several international students to celebrate our friend's birthday, but the group went somewhere fairly expensive, so we went to St. Malo instead. For those of you who have not seen on facebook, I just recently booked a trip to Amsterdam with some of the other students and to visit a friend, so I am trying to save money where I can. Luckily, St. Malo is close and fairly inexpensive to get to.

Train station in St. Malo

We took an early morning train and arrived around 8:30. We wandered around the town for a while until we found a suitable beach to hang out at for the day. We spent most of the day laying on the beach. I did some reading, took a nap or two and walked out briefly into the ocean (it was very cold). I managed to find some cool shells and I even found my first piece of sea-glass! It was a beautiful day in St. Malo (about 75 degrees, though a little chillier with the wind on the beach) so we of course did some sunbathing as well. We saw some of the sights, wandered aimlessly, and got some delicious ice cream (of which there is little to none in Rennes). Overall, it was a wonderful and relaxing day and I managed to get some good reading done on the Centre Pompidou, which is the subject for my expose. Upon our return, we met up with the group who had gone to Vannes for Cindy's birthday for a soirée and some cake. It was an eventful and relaxing weekend that helped distract from the stress of my work, even if only momentarily. I've included some more pictures below to give you an idea for how the trip went. I hope all is well state-side and everyone is enjoying the beginning of spring!