In terms of homework, there technically isn't very much per class (except Chinese which I will come back to later) but unfortunately it all adds up, and quite quickly at that, when you are taking a full 12 courses in a foreign language. I have to come home and rewrite/research my notes when there are concepts that I don't understand. Also, if we are given articles to read as supplemental information, that homework goes much faster when it is your native language and ends up taking me a good chunk of time if I properly read it for its meaning. I suppose it is worth it though, I just cannot cope with 12 courses. Taking 6 back in the USA is a ton, and 12 is just suicidal. Although I feel pretty suicidal with this current class load even in the French system. I figure it is good though, to follow as many courses as possible so that I have a higher probability of passing more classes (take more = pass more?) and getting more credit when I return to Miami.
By the way I am quite excited to return to the US in terms of registering for classes and just the university system in general. In France, in terms of the classes themselves, they are kind of comparable to those in the US and overall fine, but the whole system of signing up into the courses, and the exam which requires separate registration, plus scheduling in general is just ridiculous!I am exhausted and am still working out kinks in my schedule and it is officially the third week of classes! AHHHH! Though some of my classes are going quite well and I feel that I am totally in control. Those in that category are: Macro-Economie, Analyse de Donnés, Recherche Marketing, and FLE. There are however some courses that I am either not sure about wanting to take, iffy about the content, or just in shock over. They are: Techniques de Commerce, Info Communication, Management International, and Chinois (these are in the same order as their descriptors in the previous sentence).
So anyway, as I said earlier I would explain to you why Chinese is not going so smoothly. It is not at all because it is me learning Chinese in a francophone environment. Rather it is because of three things: 1) The French teach languages in a different way, 2) The teacher is mean 3) The class is without a real communicative purpose and has impossible expectations in terms of content. To elaborate on the first point, I will simply say that the French do not stress actually being able to communicate and therefore literally just get words and words and words to memorize, that are actually related to an example dialogue, but the problem with the dialogues is that they are too long, introduce way too many new words at once, and we never do anything except read through them once/twice in class which is like nothing because the pinyin is right below the characters so it is impossible to ignore, so no one is even paying attention to the characters. Especially because (onto the second point) the teacher is legitimately mean, so everyone is too afraid to make a mistake. Now, up until this point she had been rather agreeable to me, but that is because I am more or less the best in the class in terms of vocabulary (except the Chinese students that are in the class to learn French, of course), but this woman literally will say some of the meanest things when people make mistakes. For example, if someone didn't pronounce a word correctly or responded incorrectly to a questions she might laugh or give a mocking no, and one time she just went off on a guy on how horrible his method of writing was; how it was all over the place and disastrous and that no Chinese person could read that. Regardless of the verity of her statement, the front of a classroom is no place for a teacher to make such a comment in my opinion. And finally, there is the content expectation in this course. We had a dictation on Monday, which was to be expected, and I had memorized all 15 of the vocabulary words (around 25 characters at least) thinking it would be over them, but it was about 5 sentences of two different dialogues that had been in the book. I mean, that is simply too much to ask for a class of students to memorize between classes, especially since our attention was not directed to a particular passage or even dialogue. You can't just memorize a 100 Chinese characters out-of-the-blue. Or at least I can't. And then, oh-joy-and-rapture, we show up to class today (which has a different teacher who is nice) and we had another dictation that was completely unannounced in addition to our other homework over yet another dialogue that we had started the previous week. So literally in 1 week between two classes we were expected to produce Chinese character sentences over at least a 100 new vocabulary words, not to mention the 200 at least we are already supposed to know. And as I said, I am even ahead of much of the class so my vocab background is even bigger. Also, I am not the only on that thinks that this is impossible, my French friends Margot and Yubo complain too because it is simply too much, and the pace is so quick and yet the topics are disjointed that were not able to speak any more Chinese and our vocab words don't go well together. I am literally going to have to designate like 2 hours every day for the entire year to try to learn all this and for the most part I feel like the words are somewhat unnecessary. In the beginning you need to learn the basics - I'll use transportation as an example - You need to know about 4 vehicles and how to describe going in those vehicles. We were given a list of about 40 vehicles/transportation words (bus stop,train station) and I just cannot focus on that many in the beginning. It would be better to concretize the concept and then learn other forms of transportation at a later date, especially when each word is 2-3 new characters. Either way, at the end of the semester I am either going to have the world's largest second-year Chinese vocabulary or have not progressed at all because of sheer overwhelmedness.
But off that topic! I have an extremely important announcement: I had to purchase and start using a new jar of Nutella last week... meaning it took about three weeks for me to eat through an entire jar of nutella... holy crap.The only thing I put nutella on is my bread so you can begin to imagine how much bread I am eating here in France. Fortunately I eat an extremely well-rounded meal each lunch at the school restaurant because otherwise I think my body might go on strike from such a change of diet. Although I do cook myself pretty good dinners from time to time. Though as a side not I will add that that just got a little easier with the arrival of a surprise package from my mother in which she sent provisions ranging from Cream-of-Wheat to Q-tips (though obviously the Q-tips do not serve a dietary purpose) I have already made two meals of cream of what and am looking forward to some of the instant pastas and the taco seasoning. I have the best "pantry" of all the study abroad students.
Another update on a completely different topic: on Thursday I have my first two appointments for getting my long-stay student visa, and they are not going to be overly fun. One is an x-ray of my lungs, which won't be too bad, but the other is a blood sample which I am not looking forward to for two reasons: 1) because that is never a fantastic feeling and 2) because I cannot eat or drink that morning until my appointment - oh how I hate that! (My nutella jar can rest in peace though I suppose).
In terms of a few last general notes, the weather had been absolutely fantastic for the last 4 days; sunny and beautiful, so that has put me in a really good mood. Unfortunately I am still battling my cold and it has now progressed to the coughing stage, but hopefully I will soon be healed and back to my normal self.
Finally, I just wanted to let you know that Barbie's arm is indeed maintaining its presence on the sidewalk. At thins point I fully expect to have the opportunity to it to my mother as the highlight of Le Havre when she arrives on October 21st (I AM SO EXCITED!)
Ok, well it's past midnight so it's time for me to do the shut-down thing. I'll try to stay more diligent in posting though!
Ultimately I had to say that I am a 100, even with my sickness and the bits of scholastic stress, because overall I am just so happy to be in France, succeeding in school, and enjoying so many days straight with such beautiful weather. Je suis tellement contente.
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