First week of school - 70 degrees and sunny

On Monday, I got up bright and early, excited to go to my first real class of this semester. The three weeks of "intensive preparation" and exams don't really count - they have been more of a continuation of summer break than anything else. As the classroom was filling up, Dora and I, both feeling a little intimidated about having placed in the highest and hence most difficult level, cautiously spoke with the people sitting next to us to figure out how well they know French. The results exceeded our worst expectations: the Mexican girl on the right had lived here since 2005 and spoke the language perfectly with all the slang and local expressions, and the Norwegian lady on the left had been teaching French in Norway for fifteen years and had a doctoral degree in translation. Frightened, we waited for the professor to arrive. Fifteen minutes later, he still wasn't there. Half an hour later, no sign of him. Finally, we sent a delegation to the secretariat to see what's going on, and found out that the professor has called in ill. Not a problem - the beach is 10 minutes away from the University, and the two hours that we had until our next class were spent peacefully tanning under the Mediterranean sun.
The adventure did not end here, though: the next class ALSO happened to be canceled, this time for an undeclared reason. The same fate awaited our third and fourth classes, and soon we found ourselves walking back home from the first day of school without having seen a single teacher. Quite a promising beginning!

The following day, however, everything went as planned. Profs showed up, and we discovered that we had nothing to worry about - the two super-French speakers whom we had used in our random sampling of linguistic ability are actually far ahead of everyone else in the group, and we fall somewhere very close to the middle. Even more importantly, the professors all seem very knowledgeable and interested in their respective subjects. It was interesting to hear the "economic and political geography" professor's view of NATO (which the French call OTAN by the way - all the same words, just pronounced with a French accent and reversed in order). So anyways, he said that NATO has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, lost all of its purpose and should be disbanded as soon as possible. He also defended Russia's actions in the Georgian conflict, saying that he can't blame the Kremlin for seeing America's presence in the region as a threat to their security. I don't know if I agree entirely, but it was interesting to hear how differently the entire situation is perceived here - in the States, every newsflash would have had some kind of synonym of "Russian aggression" present.

One of my favorite pastimes is now lying on the beach with a French book. I almost finished my Balzac, ready to move on to more contemporary things. I am also much more tan now than I was at the end of August, which is at the same time cool and ironic. Life is also becoming a lot more established, especially with regards to food spending: I normally eat a little piece of yesterday's bread for breakfast, then buy some tasty little thing from a boulangerie (bakery) for lunch - usually a piece of quiche or a slice of pizza, both of which cost only 2 euros - and then we take turns cooking dinners at our apartment. The pizza is, by the way, not even the same dish as the thing they call pizza in the States. It has very little cheese, a very thin crust, amazing tomato sauce and lots of mixed veggies. Definitely a great treat.

Today, we went to the cinema to see the new film "Entre les murs" (Between the Walls). It's about a young and inspired teacher working in an inner-city school in a poor district of Paris. He tries and tries to give something to the 13- and 14-year-olds, searches incessantly for a way to connect with them, but it just doesn't work. The barrier between them, consisting of a whole mix of social, linguistic, educational, and moral differences, is almost impermeable. They refuse to believe that he actually cares about them, and he can't understand what and how they're thinking. Eventually, during one of the classes, he finally loses his temper for a second, and the students immediattely band together against him. The movie ends at the end of the school year, when he asks the pupils to share something they had learned over the past nine months, and some are unable to come up with a single thing. It is frankly one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking films I've seen in a while, I strongly recommend seeing it at some point... By the way, there were no subtitles and I understood everything!!! Not every single word, of course, but all the conversations and ideas. The words that I didn't recognize were either apparent from the context or just not very important. Yay!!!

Well, I guess I'll get going, it's a little late and I have class tomorrow... If they don't cancel it, that is... Look at the new pictures on Picasa!