School

School in France can be a very frustrating affair for a study abroad student. The major reasons being due to lack of organization and lack of computerization. When french students go to the university, they pick a major and all of their classes are picked and scheduled for them. There is rarely such a thing as an elective here, therefore each department selects all of its own classes for its students to take and not all departments start classes at the same time.

For us study abroad students who take classes from multiple departments (I'm taking them from the Literature, Histroy, DRI (for foreign students), and English departments), it is hard to line up a schedule that works. Also, every thing is done by hand. I mean, stuff is typed out and everything but there are no university-wide data bases or online records. Hal told me that, as an engineering and french student, having to take classes on two different campuses within the Université de Savoie, he had to register with each campus separately because the data isn't shared. Anyway, enough complaining, now I will tell you how my typical school day is.

I have classes four days a week, Monday through Friday. It takes me about 35-40 minutes of walking to get to class, depending on what building my class is in and how fast I walk to get there. Also, it's located at the top of a very large hill/small mountain accessible only by many hundreds of stairs and steep paths, just to make sure that you actually really want to be there ;). The picture above shows the view from campus. If you put your mouse on the very center of the picture, that is right about where I live and where I walk from everyday.

The classes that I'm taking this semester include 17th century french history, history of religion, reflexion on contemporary art, thème (which is translation of french text into english), 19th and 20th century literature with a focus on theatre, french civilization, and french linguistic perfection. All of my classes meet only once a week for about two hours a week. This can get very long. It may seem like I'm taking a lot of classes but I have to take about 2 credits here for every 1 credit I recieve at home. Most of the buildings are connected by a covered walkway and, what else of course but more stairs:

Most of my classes are pretty big. History and english classes started the first week that I was here and then literature started just this last week and the DRI classes (civilization and perfection) will start this week. I don't have a problem understanding most of my professors but there is one with a peculiar accent that gets really excited and talks really fast when he's lecturing making it almost impossible to pick out but a few words. I've found that I have most of my classes with other people that I have met from England or the U.S. which is helpful.

I've already missed a class because it was moved to earlier in the week and I didn't know it. On Thursday I went to my History class and nobody else was there so I went up to the main office area and sure enough there was a tiny little sign that said it had been moved to Tuesdays. Back home there would've been an e-mail sent out about this which makes it all the more frustrating. Of course, nobody registers for classes here until they take the exams, so I suppose they wouldn't know who to send it to.

There are hour and a half lunch breaks here every day from noon to 13:30. I usually spend them hanging out in the library (which is actually very small compared to any other collegiate library I've ever seen). This picture is the grafitti on the side of it:

Grafitti is very common here. The picture below shows it on the athletic center too. On the library is says "All Equal". I've heard that there is a grafitti story painted sequentially on the back of the stall doors in the girls bathroom, so maybe i'll have to go check it out sometime.
I had the placement test for my linguistic perfection class on Thursday. I thought it went pretty well but I imagine that I will be placed in group 2 (out of 3 groups). The results for that go up on Monday. Most of the people that I've met so far and have talked about on this blog were there to take it and we also met 2 girls from Finland named Aino (pronounced like "I know") and Ella. After the test, Alex, Hal, Aino, and Ella went to a café and got some crêpes. Mine was a chocolate crêpe and it was completely delicious!! Then we went to a meeting called "Tour du Monde au Ménage". It was an informational meeting about a program where we make a booth to represent our country for an international festival type of thing in March. I wasn't planning on going but Alex, Hal, Aino, and Ella were going, plus I thought maybe it could be a good place to meet other people. They told us about it and then had us sign up for our individual countries. Hal and I met some other Americans from St. Louis, somewhere in Colorado, and University of Missouri who we will be working with us on our poster. Below is a picture of Alex, Aino, Ella and me on our way to the meeting:

On Friday, I wandered around town and looked in some stores. I decided to take some pictures of things I haven't talked about yet. This is the Fontaine des Éléphants. It's basically right in the center of town and I walk by it for almost anywhere I go. According to Reed (who has been researching to see if he wants to come visit), it was built for a guy who went to India, got very wealthy, and then came back and donated a lot of money to the town.

The following picture is from when I was shopping. I thought it was kind of a pretty street with a mountain at the end of it. While I was shopping, I ran into a girl I met at the meeting the previous night. Her name is Lani and she's from Durango, Colorado. We went in a few stores cute stores that I'd been wanting to check out. She knew where to go because she's been in Chambéry since October.


Other exciting things include the fact that I have successfully talked both Ali and Reed into visiting me here (well, Ali didn't take so much talking, she's the one that asked me if she could come) so that's exciting!!!

Also, next weekend, I'm signed up to go skiing in the Alps. I might snowboard though instead of skiing, but I've heard that's a really touristy thing to do. I don't think I care though because I like snowboarding better.

Finally, I have decided what I'm doing for my week-long break in February. I am going to visit Bruges, Belgium; Brussesls, Belgium; and Amsterdam, Netherlands with Alex and a girl from her dorm that I've met before named Jen from England.