Classes start

Classes started Monday and I found out I made it into the advanced level (I tricked them!), which is a French literature course and will hopefully count as such at W&M (language courses won't count for me, but literature and culture will). That course is 2 hours a day and I'm also in three lectures - french literature, art history, and class that appears to be on francophone studies. For the first month, we also have 1 hour a day of phonetics.

The class locations are sooo annoying! Since this is the Sorbonne's program for foreign students, we aren't actually at the Sorbonne, which I luckily already knew or else that would be a real bummer. On lecture days, I start with a lecture at noon (until 1), then have phonetics 1:30-2:30 and the 2 hour class from 3-5. The catch is, the phonetics class is in a different building and metro stations around the first building are all 5-10 minutes away. The first lecture day, a few classmates and I walked to phonetics and got there 10 minutes late...then we returned by metro and were five minutes late. Today we walked both ways and made it on time! So even with two half hour "breaks," we're still busy the whole time. Next, we're going to try the bus...

But even if we aren't in the Sorbonne, there is no lack of historic buildings and I walk past the Pantheon a few times a day (sometimes dodging tourists).



And the trees in the back there are part of the Jardin de Luxembourg, which is really pretty. We actually cut through there to get between buildings (this was taken from the Pantheon, I would turn to the left to get to class). The tiny line between the trees is the Eiffel Tower.

So far homework isn't bad - the only class with real homework is the grammar/literature one because the lecture professors don't care what you do. For the literature lecture, he gave us a list of books we might want to read; he'll lecture on 19th and 20th century French literature and if we want to read on our own, we should (and I will, because there's an exam at the end which I don't think you can do well on without independent work). Since the homework doesn't take all night, Philippe and I found a new hangout - along the banks of the river. We found an inexpensive Lebanese take-out place near my classes one night then discovered the local picnic spot by Ile de la Cite with stairs that lead closer to the water.


Here's our view from where we sat and the photo below shows the tour boats that went by regularly, with their blinding lights.