Not My Day

After I updated earlier this  morning, I hung around campus with Christy (I flew here with her, Jennifer, and this girl named Sara who reminds me of Julia Giddy...maybe that's why I don't like her).  They ate lunch and I had already eaten so I just had a Diet Coke (only #2 in France!) and talked to them.  Christy was worried that she was turning into psycho girlfriend because she has been getting annoyed lately that every time she tries to call her boyfriend he either doesn't have his phone on, doesn't have it with him, or is "busy" with some non-life-threatening situation.  She was asking if it was okay to get mad at him.  We all agreed that it was considering we are on a really strict time schedule due to our classes 4 hrs+ per day, our eating schedules (dinner can take 2+ hrs) and our ridiculous amount of homework (4+ hrs per day), not to mention the time difference. We agreed that she should stop calling him, and should he get mad, she should gently inform him that she figured he would call when it was convenient for him, since the world apparently revolves around him... Sound familiar?

Anyway...after our rendez-vous, I met a bunch of other kids from our class at the Chavant tram stop and we went to a movie called Mes Amis Mes Amours which I understood surprisingly well.  Two single fathers who happen to be best friends and each have one kid (a boy and a girl) move in together in a house in London.  One of the fathers is a womanizer but he ultimately falls for this journalist who discovers his fear of heights.  It was interesting to me that all the songs on the soundtrack except one were in English!  The last one in French had a tune similar to L-O-V-E (last song in Disney's Parent Trap), but translated differently. I wish my iTunes were working so I could find it...

When we left the movie we were walking back to the train stop when Sonja noticed that I had sat on some gum.  Those of you who know me well know that I ironically have an oral fixation (cannot keep my fingers out of my mouth for the life of me) and also a phobia of anything that's been in or is going into anyone else's mouth - namely toothpaste and gum.  I FREAKED OUT! Especially since the blue Splendid sweater I was wearing was one I stole from Anna.  I tore it off and jumped on the tram.

I got off at Vallier-Jaures to switch to the bus that takes me to my neighborhood.  While on the bus, I spaced out and completely missed my stop and didn't realize it until about 5 stops later, at which point I was severely confused.  I knew I was going in the right direction and it took me forever to realize that I had just missed my stop.  I got off as soon as I realized and hopped on the bus in the other direction.  When I got back here, I asked Mme. where I could take my sweater to have it cleaned.  She pressured me into letting her clean it.  She started rubbing ice on it then told me to do it.  I pretended to take it into my room and do it (keep in mind my phobia) and she later barged in and asked me if I got it out.  I said yes, hoping she'd leave me alone and she asked me to see it.  So I just roughly asserted that I was taking it to the cleaner.  She can be REALLY pushy!  The ice wasn't working anyway.

Earlier this morning, as I mentioned in my earlier update, I spoke to my teacher (Emily) about the difficulty I was having with the text.  I feel like everyone in class is either A) smarter than me B) majoring in French C) had way more French classes than me D) lying about the degree of difficulty they are having or E) all of the above.  I told Emily that this is the second text that has taken me multiple hours to get through, and I can't even understand what it's saying, let alone write a paper on it (which is what we were supposed to do last night).  I've NEVER had so much trouble with a French class.  Every French class I took prior to this was difficult for me, I would work really hard and never ended up with anything other than a B+ in all three classes, which I was happy with.  This class, however, is RIDICULOUS. We have hours upon hours of homework and it's frustrating and time consuming and there's just no time to do it.  Emily promised that I would understand the text better after class and that's what class is for, etc.  She was right.  Between listening to other people's questions and breaking up into small groups, I realized that I actually understood the article better than most people.  Which is sad, because I didn't understand a lot of it at all.  We have a small paper due Monday (about three pages) on the article and then Thursday we have a big paper (about six pages) due.  It's just a lot of work and I feel like they aren't taking into account that a lot of us would like to see the country in between class and dinner...

I think I'm going to take it easy tonight, maybe plan an outline for the paper on the way to Montpelier tomorrow afternoon and write it Sunday evening when I get home.  I'll go in early Monday to talk to Emily about it and make sure that it's legit to turn in.  I need to do better than I did on my last one... Apparently she wasn't too impressed...  We have a placement test tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. and then after I'm coming back here to pack and maybe nap and then dropping my computer off at Apple before boarding the train to Montpelier.  Hopefully I will have time to post pics before things pick up speed again on Monday (I start my other class on Tuesday).  It's crazy that after next week we will be halfway through the program!

Okay...well shower and bedtime for yours truly.  I had to get up at 8 this morning and tomorrow I have to get up even earlier.  Mme. and Mme. Dosso got a kick out of that at dinner.  They think everything I do is funny... read in the pool, BBM Anna all day long, wake up at 10 or 11...  They are going to be rolling tomorrow when I show up for le petit dejeuner around 7:30 a.m.

Au revoir!

Finally!

At this time two days ago, I was on a flight to France.  My mom, Sophia, Nathan and I went to sushi at Sadako in Ann Arbor around 5:15 before we went to the airport.  I got there around 7, checked in, and boarded my plane around 9.  I watched the movie Definitely, Maybe toward the beginning of the flight, which was really good.  Then I tried to sleep, but I couldn't because I couldn't get comfortable.  We arrived in Paris at 5 a.m. Michigan time, 11 a.m. France time.  Before we boarded the plane, me and three other girls from my program (Wendy, Christy, and Andrea) found each other and introduced ourselves.   After we landed, we found each other again and made our way to the train station which was connected to the Charles de Gaulle airport.  They purchased their tickets online, as did I, but they were having problems retrieving them from the kiosks.  I already had a hard copy of mine mailed to me, and I began to wonder why they didn't.  It occurred to me that the ticket I purchased was for a train that left from Paris Gare de Lyon (Charles de Gaulle airport is about an hour away from Paris).  I got really nervous and went to information who redirected me to the guichets.  A man who worked in one of them was really helpful and not only exchanged my ticket for me, btu also gave me a student card which provides 60% discounts on TGV tickets.  This will come in handy when I visit Maureen in Paris!  Anyway, I needed two tickets, one from CDG to Lyon, and then one from Lyon to Grenoble.  We got on the first train around 8 a.m. Michigan time, 2 ;m. France time and off the second train around 12 p.m. Michigan time, 6 p.m. France time.  My host mom, Madame Cottave-Fabert picked me up from the station and drove me back to her home.  She seemed very nice and helpful.  When we arrived at her home (a kind of big, very old home on the outskirts of the city) she showed me the salle de bains, the W.C. (which we had to pay to use in the train station .50 Euros!) and my bedroom.  My bedroom is tiny with a twin bed that is too short for me.  It is also lined with dolls, which creep me out, and posters of dogs and horses.  The bed is super uncomfortable and the past two nights I have woken up in the middle of the night sweating (it gets up to 90* here lately!) and have been unable to fall back asleep for at least two hours.  When this happens, I get frustrated that I am so hot and uncomfortable and I question why I came here so eagerly.  I start to think about my family and my good friends and I get really homesick and start crying, it's weird.  I've been away from home so many times, I had no problem transitioning to college, etc.  I guess I've never been out of the country alone.  Also, when I went to Harvard summer school back in 2005, I met a really good friend named Lisa and we became really close.  This year, on Alternative Spring Break in Chicago, the same thing happened with my friend Maureen.  Here, I haven't met anyone I click with yet.  Judging by the looks of things, I don't really see a good friend in anyone here.  Luckily today, another girl came to live at the house with me.  She is from U-W Madison and she is in the same program as me.  Her name is Jessica.  She's blond and overweight from Milwaukee, and she has no interest in going out and having fun, but I am just really grateful there is someone else in the house with me.  I guess I've just been feeling really lonely.  Today we went on a walk after dinner and that was nice.  After our walk, I did some reading on Grenoble.  Two places I want to go this week are La Bastille and La Musee de la Resistance, which is on Rue Hebert.  I was actually on that road yesterday when I went to an art museum with Mme. Cottave and her friend.  The art was displayed in Ernest Hebert's old house and all of the art was by him.  It was small, but the paintings were really beautiful and I appreciated getting out of the house.  Before we left, I went for a dip in Mme.'s piscine in my new red maillot de bains.  Her pool is really weird though, it's like covered by a dome that is maybe 4 ft above the surface of the pool.  Hello, claustrophobia!  Oh, one more thing! Today, as part of our homework, we were given a kind of scavenger hunt to do around downtown Grenoble.  It was cool because I saw a lot of the shops, cool fountains, old buildings, etc.  I also had to take the tram home by myself...and I did, pas de probleme! I also took it to the university this morning for my 21h class.  It's going to suck when I begin at 8h du matin!  Anyone can tell you I am NOT a morning person! Anyway it's kinda late and I've got homework to do in the morning.  Bon soir!