My Second Blog Entry.

I love Paris so far. It’s an amazing city of beautiful buildings, amazing food, and fantastic art. My program has been a bit overwhelming so far- everyone else here seems to be a French major, or at least a French minor. I claim to be a French minor but I actually haven’t filled out any of the paperwork.

The biggest cultural differences that I have observed so far include:

1. There are no screens on the windows. Luckily, my room is on the first floor. When you open a window here, you really open one.
2. Professors really don’t care if you do well in your classes. The main goal is for you to learn the things that the VERY knowledgeable professor is going to tell you. They don’t have office hours. There are no grades besides your Exposé Oral and your final exam. You might get a 15 page paper if you’re lucky.
3. You absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, put cream or sugar in your coffee.

I’m really enjoying it here, and many things seem to be small triumphs- I negotiated my cell phone contract today. I managed to get a phone that was relatively inexpensive, with a decent pay-as-you-go plan, all ‘en français’ !

My host family is really, really nice. There are two parents, the father works at an office and the mother works from home. They have four kids, aged 15, 18, 22 and 24. The 22 year old is backpacking for 6 months in china and Taiwan (her parents are freaking out, we talk about it frequently at dinner). The 15 year old is the one that I see the most, she’s really nice and extremely outgoing. The 18 year old (the only boy in the family), is studying to be an engineer. In France, this means going to school from 8:30 am-10:15 pm in an attempt to prepare yourself for a good engineering school. Once you (one of the lucky 200 to be accepted from a pool of 30,000) get into engineering school, it’s even more work. I can’t imagine how he does it, but I think that one of the best ways to describe his parents would be ‘driven’, if that explains it. Once they say something, it is done. I don’t think that Guillaume really had much of a chance debating it. The sister who is 24 works as an auditor (still not really sure what that is), and her job is roughly from 9 am to 1:30 am and doesn’t even get paid overtime! (according to her father, “Ça C’EST VERITABLEMENT INSUPPORTABLE!). You can probably tell that we have very lively discussions about the state of the kids in the family over dinner.

Since being here, I also bought my monthly metro pass- it’s about a 30 minute ride for me to get to the majority of my classes, I only have to make one transfer. I’m really lucky that I only have to make one stop- there are plenty of people who have to spend an hour on the train to get to class. I took the metro around the city yesterday after orientation to see some of the major sights in my neighborhood- l’opéra, galleries la Fayette, etc. I also have a killer view of the Eiffel tower across from where I like to get my morning coffee- no joke. I think I’m going to have to take a picture to prove it, but I hope that everyone finds time in their schedules to come visit me and see La Tour Eiffel. We can also get baguettes and have cheese and wear berets- all those good ‘french’ things (we can actually do all of that except the berets. There I draw the line).

If I post this in the evening on Wednesday, which I hope to do, it should be around 1pm in Chicago. If I post this tomorrow, I should be posting anytime around 11am (4am Chicago). There’s a weird internet situation at my house… my host mother has told me that I can use her WIFI internet (imagine it pronounced ‘weeeeeeeeeehuh feiiiiiiiiiiiuuuugh’. I know, it took me about 2 minutes to figure out what on earth she was trying to describe to me. But now that I know, I should be able to connect ‘sans mot de passe’, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe I’ll figure it out. If not, I’ll use the IES internet tomorrow.

Anyway, I hope that you all (if anyone reads this) are having a lovely time ‘aux etats-unis’. I just got a cell phone, and it’s free for me if you call it (I think it will charge you a bloody fortune). But if you’re interested in calling me, for whatever reason, send me an email and I can give you my number.

Gros bisous,

Margarette