Catch-Up Post

This is going to be a quick post, since it's really time for me to be going to sleep, but I don't know when else I'll get the chance to write about the last week.

My first week of school went really well. As disoriented as the first day was, each day has gotten easier and I've moved from trying to make contact with people to actually a number of my classmates who I genuinly enjoy spending time with and I really look forward to getting to know. I'm able to follow all of my classes. It helps that I have so many classes in English and the history class is review for me. So far, French is the most challenging classes, but that said, I haven't had my physics class yet, which I look to with apprehension.

I actually consider myself lucky that I'm already integrating with the system with success, moderate as it may be. That's because I spend Saturday and today (Sunday) meeting all the other inbound students in my Rotary district. They are from all over the world, and absolutly wonderful! I say that I consider myself lucky, because after meeting the other inbounds, I realized that I'm starting off with really good language skills compared to many exchange students. We're all struggling to communicate and make connections, so it was both really relaxing and really exciting to be surrounded by people who knew how it feels to think at two thousand miles an hour but only speak at about two words a minute.

However, communication was really pretty easey between most of the exchange students because those who weren't native English speakers (and between the U.S., Canada, and Australia, there were a lot of us)  had learned English primarily before learning French. In fact, it was pretty impressive how nearly fluent the Taiwanese, Argentinian, Swedish, and Mexican kids were in English. On the whole, it was one of the coolest expiriences I've ever had to be surrounded by people who were switching off between first, second, and third languages (with varying degrees of success) as they changed from group of people to group of people; and the absolute best part was being able to participate in it. I love the feeling that I can switch between two different languages at will. I'm nowhere approaching fluency in French yet, but I'm proficient enough to say anything I want and to understand everything said to me... and what a difference just these past two weeks have made!

In fact, we were all so busy talking to each other, comparing expiriences, comiserating and exclaming that I think we barely noticed we were in Paris at all for the entire journey from the train station to the hostel. As the rest of the day continued we did most of the really touristy things in Paris- climbing the Eiffel Tower, seeing the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo, taking a boat tour on the Seine. To be honest I was impressed by all the sights, but I was really taking mental notes for things to come back to sometime when I can visit Paris outside of a massive group of other students. At one point we were walking through the Louvre together, talking and laughing, when we were briefly distracting by the huge portrait of the Coronation of Napoleon (I'm sure you'd recognize it if you saw it). We stopped momentarily to gaze at the enormous canvas, the original of an image which all of us had seen in countless textbooks, and then recommenced our discussion on how much we missed peanutbutter.

Sometime soon I will describe my school and school day, and you may be lucky enough to find it includes pictures! I have, after far to many unimmortalized expiriences, finally purchased a camera. Unfortunatly, it turns out you have to buy the memory card seperatly... Who knew?

Please excuse my typos in this blog as well as in the last several. I hope you'll understand that when it's between sleep and proof reading, I have plenty good motivation to choose sleep.