How to make southern France freak out...

Snow...that's apparently all it takes.  It snowed today in Montpellier, which I quickly learned practically NEVER happens.  I walked into the U.S. office that they have set up for our program today, and one of the staff looked at me and said, "il neige...il ne neige JAMAIS ici."  This means, "it's snowing, it NEVER snows here."  He seemed a little bitter about this.  Meanwhile, everyone from the University of Minnesota was ready to put on their shorts and eat at an outdoor café.  When I was on campus today, I watched two Frenchmen fight with a bag of sidewalk salt to melt the non-existent ice.  They yelled at each other for a bit and then just started digging into the bag with their hands and throwing it about.  I wanted to go tell them that it wouldn't even be cold enough for that to be necessary, but it was too fun watching them argue.  The rest of the city seemed totally unprepared for this as well.  Apparently in the past, they have closed everything down at the slightest sign of snow.

Okay, so here's a rundown of my life.  I started classes on Monday.  I'm taking five, four of which will likely be very easy.  Mondays I have "Civilisation du sud", or "southern civilization".  This is a class about the south of France basically.  Should be pretty fun.  We have to do projects about cities in the south of France, but they can't be researched.  You have to actually go do something.  My group is currently deciding between Nice and Marseilles.  Oh good god no!!!! Don't make me spend a week in Marseilles!!!!  That's cruel and unusual punishment.  Wait you're saying you are going to give me course credit for spending a weekend there?  How dare you?!?!?!?!?!  Hah...I love my life.

Tuesdays, I have two classes. In the morning I have a class strictly on conversation.  This is a joke.  I just finished a conversation class back home which was MUCH more difficult than this.  Which brings me to my next topic...the level of French spoken here by the majority of the program is DEPLORABLE at best.  It's frustrating.  I literally had one girl tell me that she didn't want to speak French.  My response (silently to myself), GET OUT OF FRANCE YOU DIPSHIT.  I don't mind if you suck at it, but if you are going to come to France and not try and speak the language, just leave.  Go to Cabo or something with the rest of your sorority.  

Phew, now that that's out of the way, Tuesday nights I have a pretty intense literature class with M. Picot.  It's called "Le mythe du vampire", or "the myth of the vampire" (I know that one was probably difficult to figure out).  It's basically about the use of vampires in literature.  Pretty cool topic, though I'm not sure how this is applicable to anything.  Once the prof found out about the Americans in the class, he spent a good 15 minutes making fun of us.  He rattled off something about his favorite author and none of us had heard of him before.  He managed to squeak out, "I hate you" in English.  Later on we realized he was saying Joseph Conrad, but it sounded nothing like that at all with his accent.

Wednesdays I have a large lecture connected with the vampire class called "Les avants gardes de vigntieme siecle".  This prof is stellar and is very easy to understand.  Later on that day, I have Advanced Phonetics.  I already took this class at the U of M pretty much, but they make us take it again here.  This will be impossibly easy.  The teacher loves me though because I already know the international phonetic alphabet.

Thursdays all I have is advanced grammar in the morning.  Then I'm done.  There was a class I really should have taken on Fridays because it would have counted for absolutely everything back at the U of M.  I, however, compromised my academic integrity and decided not to take any class on Friday.  I will thus be peacing this place most weekends right after class on Thursday to travel.  I mostly won't even have to come back until Monday mornings because my class on Monday doesn't start until 3:15.  Brilliant eh?

So my sleep schedule is obviously very screwy.  I accidentally fell asleep when I got home today at around 8:00pm.  I slept til midnight, which is why I'm wide awake at 3:30 in the morning.  I have to wake up for class at around 8:00 too, so we'll see how this goes.  I will be making a website with flickr.com or something to post my pictures, so watch for that in my next post.  Leave comments if there is something in particular you want to hear about.  

A plus!

Corey