France!

January 24, 2010

Well! I decided I’d better start blogging about France before I forget all the cool things I’ve done. I’ll try and keep it in some kind of order so you all aren’t all lost!

Just a brief update of France – I arrived the 12 with no place to live and managed to find a beautiful apartment with the 2 sweetest, cutest French girls. My apartment is literally 2minutes away from my school and in the heart of Lyon. My room is big, with large windows, we live on the 2^nd floor and the building is old (I still have to find out how old), the floor creaks where ever we walk, it’s all heated by radiators, all the fireplaces are filled in (but there’s one in every room), the ceilings are high and I LOVE it!

School has started… but that’s about all I know. I’m taking 5 courses – 4 business 1 French – and I plead guilty for changing my courses so that I have a 3 day weekend every week. However let’s not forget this is a cultural, language and academic exchange and I’m in Europe … and my classes come back as pass/fail… so all I have to do is pass! The French, however, are very strict about class attendance (and tardiness) and so we are practically forbidden to skip. In all of my classes 50% of my grade will come from the final exams – which will be a drag. OK! Enough about school!

The Exchange Students

There are about 110 of us a mixture from USA, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic , Brazil, Argentina, Senegal, Ireland, Italy, Colombia, Finland, UK, Poland, Nigeria, & Austria. Most of us are from Mexico, Canada and USA. After coming from meeting all the amazing Rotary exchange students in India I have to admit none of them completely struck my fancy. However after having some opportunities to talk and mingle they are quite a couple that are very cool. (No climbers though… sigh.)

To our horror (and probably secret pleasure) we were all given a sheet with all our photos, our names and our nationalities. However when the school (ESDES) requested photos from us we undoubtedly thought they needed passport photos so all our Canadian photos are the best mug shots ever … (I guess in other countries you can actually SMILE for your photos…) They are printed off in colour and my red hair looks a startling neon orange… oh joy.

There are a huge number of students who don’t speak French or who have no knowledge of the language and no desire to practice or speak it. This is undoubtedly disappointing for me and I’m great full for my French roomies and their ever-inclusive friends. Even the students who do speak it don’t seem to want to so although I find them nice I’ve limited my time with them and plan to immerge myself in the culture as much as possible.