Out and About

At last, the weekend arrives!

It has truly been a long week. Yesterday I went to the drawing/painting class, which turned out to be awkward and very strange, so I am not going to go back. Also I don't even know how I would go about buying art supplies here...there was no list of things I would need for the class; when I asked some of the students, they shrugged and gestured towards their melange of random things that they had obviously collected over the years. Oh well. I did meet a girl who was super friendly and told me that I speak French well (so encouraging to hear!). So now I have finally settled on taking a history of modern/contemporary sculpture class, which I had today. The professor was pretty great; she spent most of the class talking about ephemeral art and people like Alexander Calder who enjoyed making toys for kids as well as the incredible sculptures you can find in the National Gallery in D.C. I don't know that much about sculpture, so I think it will be an enriching class for me, especially since it is taught from a French perspective.

Actually I have liked all of the professors I've had so far. Yesterday I had my phonetics class in the morning, which I am sure will be difficult but rewarding. Then I had a class on written expression, which is going to be a butt-kicker, I can tell. The professor was talking about how she knows that we skirt around our mistakes in our writing, but that she is going to make us face them. Yikes! This is what I get for being placed so highly. It seems as though the professors expect you to be very self-motivated; most of my final grades will be based on a couple of tests/papers, I expect. I don't mind though; it's easy to be motivated when your ability to communicate with the people around you depends on it.

Last night I went out with a bunch of girls to a little pizzeria. The owner and waitress realized we were Americans and began speaking English to us immediately, which is normally discouraging and kind of frustrating, but we didn't really feel like trying to blend in, so we just went with it. It was kind of nice, for once. After, we met up with some friends and hung out at a café. One of the monitors, Brice came with us also. It's really nice that he and Yoann, one of the other monitors, hang out with us even though they are not obliged to do so. It forces us to speak French and helps me feel a little less like a stranger. Also we have entirely too much fun exchanging slang and silly expressions in French and English. It was, of course, the infamous "jeudi soir" on which every college student in Rennes gathers at Ste. Anne for a good time. We were nicely cocooned in our café corner, but when we left we encountered the mobs of people on Rue de la Soif (literally Thirsty Street...not even kidding) to push our way through to the other side where we could catch the bus. I don't think I've ever lived in a town where you are sure to run into everyone you know in one little square on a Thursday night.

Weekends here seem to be much quieter because many of the college students go home. This is the last weekend of the sales in France, so the whole world is going shopping tomorrow (including me). Though there are rumors of the possibility of snow, which might keep some people in their cozy homes. Not me! I will bundle up and face the gross weather that is the norm here. I think for my February break, I would like to make my way to the south of France where maybe I will see the sun a few times...