Sunday was great. I slept in after a girls' night out (Happy Birthday Lucy!), went for a walk with my host mother in the "woods" where we took this dirt path to a small man-made lake/waterfall (and thus felt like disney, somehow) and came back for some lunch. Then, my host mother said she usually bakes a cake on Sunday, would I like to help? I had a lot of fun learning how to measure by mass, about different kinds of flower, general cuisine vocabulary, with more than a dash of culinary insight... We made a lemon pie from scratch and it was delicious. Later, when my host mother's English friend dropped in for a visit, she, my host mother and sister, and I had (some more of the) pie and talked about movies, family, England, America, France, the like, and she introduced me to the phrase "damp squib," essentially the wick of a firework that fails to ignite.
That's about how the French university system feels to me now, mid-greve. I'm supposed to have 2 lecture classes, four small group classes, and 1 film class. Last week I had class only long enough each time for the professor to say we would not be having class, with the exception of my History of France: 20th Cent. class which proceeded as scheduled, and this week was worse:
Monday one class was canceled by a teacher who was appalled that no one responded to her e-mail suggesting we do something else with the time (had no idea she was waiting to hear back on that...), followed by a group class that said nothing about the lecture it's supposed to apply to, but did talk about two other courses... i guess the architecture of India/China class is canceled completely(?), today one of my group classes met, but only for half the time because they were shutting down the campus for a general assembly. My afternoon class for today had been canceled since the weekend, so no surprise there. My history class is supposed to meet at 12 tomorrow, it's my only class tomorrow, and I just got an e-mail from one of my profs saying that campus will be closed until they have another meeting on MARCH 2.
This is bad news in so many ways... for one, I can't even go to the class that would actually be happening, which would have brought me up to *7* credits for this semester... now I'm back down to *3* Second, my profs have been reassuring us that classes will recommence after vacation (next week, i.e. there would be class the first week of March). However, if they're having another meeting March 2, there still won't be classes. And Paris is an expensive place to hang out when you're not getting any credit for it.
People would sometimes ask me why you were occasionally grumpy in AP Psychology and often couldn’t tolerate Mrs. Miller, to which I would reply like the old codger whose heart has been touched by the Christmas spirit, “I think... I think she just wants to learn.”
ReplyDeleteThis would happen to you of all people.