Originally Written on July 5th, 2011
So….Dijon!! Getting here wasn’t that bad - just a lot of waiting in
the train station - and I’m settling in pretty nicely :) The one huge
crimp in the trip is that internet is really hard to get. They said we
would have it in our room, which is not true. Apparently there is a
separate network that students use during the year, but because its
summer we don’t have access to it. Thankfully, their student union has
some pretty fast wifi.
Yesterday, we took a placement test to determine what level we’re at.
I didn’t think it was terribly difficult, but one of the listening
sections was incredibly hard to comprehend just because of the quality
of the cassette (!!!!) that they were using. I tested into five, which I
think is the right place for me (its out of six). There are many
students from around the world in my class, such as Ireland, Russia,
India, Brazil, and Italy. I’m having some difficulty understanding them
when they’re speaking haha, I didn’t realize just how much my ear is
attuned to an American speaking French. I don’t think that class will be
that bad - it will force me to expand my French but I don’t think I’ll
be slaving away at homework every night or anything. I think that the
instructors really want us to spend time exploring Dijon and talking to
the French people.
We also went to Carrefour yesterday, which is this gigantic French
walmart. IT. WAS. AWESOME. Things were so cheap there! And they have so
much cheese!! The girls that I’m going in on with food also love cheese
just as much as I do, and we’ve already planned on getting a different
cheese each time we go.
I’m excited to travel around France on the weekends. Next weekend,
we’ll be going to Paris and two weekends after that we’re going to the
Loire Valley. I think I’m mainly going to stay in France during my free
travel as well, because there is so much to see and I know I’ve barely
scratched the surface of France. I really want to go to Nice and Mont
St. Michel - those are my top two priorities I think.
Although it is internet-less, I love my room! The whole wall opposite
of the door is a window and a door onto a little balcony. And I have a
cute little sink and wayyy more storage space than I’ll ever need.
In some ways I feel like France is incredibly modern and efficient -
especially the transportation. The bus system is incredibly more
punctual than COTA, and the trains are very easy to use. There seem to
be more student discounts, more encouraging of students to get out and
do cultural activities. At the same time, however, the odd places that
they decide to have internet or not have it (like the middle of a
hallway), not having doors in strategic locations, and just the general
lack of technology in the classrooms was puzzling at first to me. I’m
guessing that maybe they just don’t care about these things like we do.
Thats always how they’ve done it and its worked, so they’ll just keep on
doing it that way.
I think I’ll have another post soon, because I know I’m forgetting things, but I just can’t remember them now!
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