Last night (Sunday night) I went to a Franglish "speed-dating" event with two of my AU friends. It isn't actually speed dating, but you spend 14 minutes each with a bunch of people, 7 minutes in English and 7 in French. On one side of the table is a native French speaker and on the other is a native English speaker. It was actually quite interesting even though it was nerve-wracking. I'm glad I went and will probably go to another. Then I went to bed because the next day was the day I'd been dreading: the first day of classes.
The day of reckoning had arrived. First day of classes. To explain in the most brief way possible, there are three years in French undergrad, and I can take any of them (L1, L2, or L3). Obviously the L3 is going to be difficult despite the fact that at home I'm in my third year of college because the classes are not in my native language. So I decided to try out L1s and L2s. This week we foreign students are essentially showing up to any classes we might want to take to see if we're comfortable with the language level, material level, etc. By February 10th we have to decide on a final schedule.
So today I had planned to go to an L1 class (2 hours long) with a 2 hour break and then an L2 class (3 hours long). Let me tell you, I did not attend the latter. I realized after understanding almost none of the L1 class that I was most likely not cut out for L2, especially for the difficult one that afternoon. It was very disheartening.
Luckily there was another foreign exchange student from Germany in that class and thanks to orientation I already knew her! We talked to some very very nice French students who are going to send us the notes and we talked to the professor who recommended a book, which he explained the class follows very closely. Later the other foreign student and I went to a book store to try to find the book and realized we hadn't been given an author. After a while of searching and trying to find something similar, we came up with 3 maybes and I'm going to email the professor if I can find his email address to see if it's one of those. Everything today was frustrating and exhausting.
Please tell me "Histoire des institutions jusqu'à 1099" is one of these three options
So tonight I have to try to figure out how many credits I can get for each class and I have an email in to my advisor at American University to make sure it's okay that I'm possibly taking two medieval history classes, because if AU gives me credit by assigning it to the most similar AU class, it will assign both as the ONE medieval history class AU offers, which I have already taken. So there's that! Honestly I'm just tired and need to go to bed early and try not to worry so much. Tomorrow the foreign exchange students taking history are meeting with that department head, there's a luncheon for us foreigners, and a bunch of classes I want to sit in on. But if they're anything like today I'll probably fall asleep out of frustration and ask for the notes from another student. Ughhhh.
Bisous,
La vache espagnole
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