We're Not At Dickinson Anymore

I officially survived my first week of classes at my french university! It has been an extremely challenging week to say the least but it can only get better from here. Different doesn't even begin to describe le Mirail as compared to Dickinson.

On Monday I had my first class at 10:30am. If this was Dickinson, I would wake up probably around 9:45 and still be to class early. Now that I have a half-hour commute via bus and metro, I had to wake up at 8:30 in order to get to le Mirail with enough time to find my classroom and not be a sweaty mess. When I visited the university two weeks ago, on the schedule it said that this class was in Amphi 10. However, between that visit and Monday, Amphi 10 had been crossed off and replaced with Amphi 8. See, here in France, everything is still done on paper. The internet is really not used to it's fullest potential. So unless you go and check the class schedule you will have no way of knowing that your class has been changed. Like me. I went to Amphi 10 on Monday thinking that that's where class was. Luckily, Kat called me to tell me that it was in Amphi 8. So I got to that room and we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 30 minutes the 20 or so students in the room got up and left since the prof didn't show up. We decided to go check Amphi 10, just on the off chance that the class was there and sure enough it was. So I was 30 minutes late to my first ever real class in France. I have never been late to a Dickinson class. But it was fine and the professor didn't care. The class was all about Orientalism, Japonisme, and Primitivism and I got super into it. The professor was really easy to follow and I understood everything. Probably because I knew most of it already but still. It was a good way to ease into learning art history in french.

I don't have any classes at le Mirail on Tuesday but on Wednesday I was back for Gothic Art and Alexandria during the Hellenistic period (Egyptian Art for you non geography/art people). Gothic Art was extremely challenging. The professor was a bit harder to understand plus I don't know all of the terms related to Gothic Art in English, so trying to hear them and write them down correctly in French was challenging. And exhausting. At the end of the class I went up to the professor to introduce myself and tell him that I'm an American student and he knew that I was even before I told him. Probably because of the blank stare I had on my face during class. He was really nice though and said that I should buy this one book of vocabulary and that he's had Dickinson students in class before so he gets what we're doing. I met Sarah and Kathleen for lunch at the "caf" at le Mirail but we decided to take the metro in to town for lunch because it was a zoo. For my Dickinson readers, think of the caf at lunch time and then multiply that insanity by like a million. The lines go in all directions, you're getting hit by backpacks, and you don't understand what the hell anyone is saying or doing. Struggles. I had my other class in the afternoon which was a little bit better. The problem is that it's from 4:00 - 6:00 and it's in basically a dungeon. It's this really old lecture hall with no windows. I'm not at Dickinson anymore. I know more about Ancient Egypt than I do Gothic Architecture so that made it a bit easier to understand the professor. I guess I'm discovering that when I go in to a class knowing some information about the subject in English it's easier for me to understand it in French.

This morning, I broke one of my most important Dickinson rules. I refuse to ever take a class at 8:30am at Dickinson, even when my commute is 8 minutes maximum. This morning I had to wake up at 6:30 to get to le Mirail in time for class. I am not a morning person. At all. In high school, Ian and I drove to school in silence. He knows. And yet there I was, getting ready for school in the dark this morning. I had zero choice in the matter. I needed another class and this was the only one that didn't overlap with a class at the Dickinson center or another class at le Mirail. I had Prehistoric Art at 8:30 and then Literature and Painting from the 16th-18th centuries at 10:30. Prehistoric art was interesting, especially because we don't talk about that in any of our art history classes at Dickinson. The professor is really nice but she talks so quickly that by the time I understood what she was saying I didn't have time to write it down otherwise I would miss the next thing. I think I need to start typing my notes. Another thing I refuse to do at Dickinson. I'm breaking all my rules! I'm such a badass! (sarcasm) Litterature and Painting was bizarre. I feel like in the two hours that we had class the professor didn't teach us anything. He went over the bibliography, which is so not a syllabus and I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do with it, and then showed us some images using a slide projector from 1960. The classroom itself looked like it was also from the 60s. Felt like I stepped back in time. I hung out in the library until 4:00 (missing the quiet section with Cern) and then had Medieval Mural Painting. I thought that I was going to hate the class but it actually turned out to be really interesting. The professor was also really easy to understand and sooooo French. Tall, thin, well dressed. Damn her. The problem with that class was that none of the rooms of air conditioned so I was melting (it's been in the 80s all week here) and this particular classroom was right next to the massive construction going on on campus so it was loud.

All in all, this week really wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. So far the only major issues are that EVERYONE on campus smokes. The only place I can find fresh air is the library. And I need to bring food or leave campus if I want to eat without experiencing the watering hole scene from Mean Girls. But I think that in time I'll adjust.

That was a lot of reading so here's an Instagram picture I took last weekend at a park!