First Day of School

Well, yesterday we finally went to school. It took us about half an hour to get there, but hopefully now that we know where we are going exactly it will take only twenty minutes or so. School's in the 11th District of Paris which is cool, because it's alot farther away from all the monuments and tourist attractions. So, we saw lots more normal Parisians. It's very unimpressive, since it's on the 1st story (which is actually the second-Europeans count the ground floor as zero). I didn't take any pictures of school yesterday, so maybe I will today. First we took a very long written test...well, it was long for some of us:) If you don't know any French the written's not too hard. It was strange though, because I could translate most of the test, with the Latin that I knew-which is minimal. But I had no idea how to form answers in the correct person, tense, etc. So, after the written we got a presentation of our month schedule-which was all in French and then translated quickly into English for us. We get to go on a field trip to the cinemas(movie theatre) and we get a guided tour of some non-touristy part of Paris. I'm excited for those. When the presentation was over we all had to wait around for an oral exam by the four professors. Everyone was crammed into the very small lobby and there was Spanish, French, Japanese(or Chinese, I really have no idea), English(in British, Austrian, Australian, and American accents), and German flying around. Almost everyone speaks English, and for most people French is a third language or fourth. Coming in only knowing a very little bit of French, was very intimidating. For the oral final, groups of five went into the classroom and sat facing the four professors. Kate and I were in the same group with an Australian chef, a Peruvian guy, and another American. The teachers spoke no English to us, and we were asked to introduce ourselves in French (name, nationality, profession), basically whatever we could do. All of us got put into the beginning level, which is in the afternoons for three hours. When testing was all over we wandered around the 11th district for awhile and then decided to hit up some museums. Unfortunately most of the museums are closed on Mondays, so we did alot of walking. We did get to go into the Invalide, which is basically a history of France's wars. Napoleon's tomb was very grandiose and pompous-like the man himself. here's a pic.



My favorite part of the museum was the WWI and WWII section. Lot's of cool posters from the wars and actual footage. The WWII one was odd though because there was only a very tiny section devoted to the Jews. Still, very interesting to see the world wars from the perspective of another country. Even though all the dates were the same, the wars looked almost completely different than the way we learn about them as Americans. I really like that museum and we'll probably go again. here's a poster for your enjoyment...actually two.