I feel like it has been too long since I did a blog post, about 8 days to be exact, so I wanted to make sure that I kept all of you in the loop. Unfortunately there is really nothing that exciting going on which is why it has been such a long time since I posted. And actually, on there other hand there has been a lot going on with me and my courses, and working with my French professor back home to receive transfer credit (which Miami is extremely unwilling to give for anything except literature courses - grrrrrr I AM SO SICK OF LITERATURE). And also I just spent two days writing my honors petition for honors credit for my first semester of study abroad which reached a massive 3,500 words, which is basically an extended essay from high school, for those of you familiar with the IB extended essay required during my senior year.
Now my Miami-related homework is going to be preparing syllabi for my business-related courses and contacted the head of the marketing department and hoping for better luck with my transfer credits there. Actually I'm thinking that "hoping" isn't going to be quite enough....
My courses are going fairly well out here, though I am struggling to find motivation for a lot of my classes since I am really not achieving the material that I need to graduate and I am really starting to look forward to graduating and I think I am kind of just ready to be back in the US efficiently finishing up my degree. On the bright side I do have several very interesting business and marketing courses to which I enjoy going. And also my FLE language courses are quite informative, and there is no denying that my French is always improving, it just boils down to the fact that I am ready to graduate and I do not feel that I am most efficiently working toward that goal here in France. But at least I am bilingual!
I should mention that I am still in the change-around-course stage, so I am still not 100% sure what classes I will be taking, though I am fairly certain. I have dropped my translation and grammar courses (although I found both, and in particularly the grammar course, interesting, they were not going to transfer as anything back in the US and yet they were still adding to my homework load. I also dropped statistics because in order to hopefully get a French credit back at Miami I have to take a course of XVIII century literature and the times conflicted with stats. On the bright side I have already checked out the classes offered by Miami this summer and there is an online stats course, so I'll definitely be taking that. Oh and speaking of summer courses, I forgot to update my blog, but I received a summer tuition waiver back in Oxford through the Honors program, which will waive 90% of my tuition fees for this summer. This is of course a huge blessing, but also explains why I haven't been posting as much as usual because I was busy typing up three massive essays explaining why I should receive a summer tuition waiver... woot.
Finally, David and I have a "winter vacation" coming up at the end of this week, so that is exciting. We are not really sure exactly what we are going to do during it because we are saving our money for more travel at the end of a semester, but we are thinking of checking out several of the nearby towns, doing some little day trips and possibly even a bit of skiing, since we have yet to make it up to the mountains. One thing most certainly on the list is a visit to the Lac Bourget, a very huge and nearby lake. There is a bike path from Chambéry to the lake so we would like to rent some bikes and go up, see the lake and visit the the Tombs of Hautecomb within an abbey, where the royal members of the House of Savoy are buried. Of course, we may hold off if it stays as cold as it has been because no one can go for a bike ride in -10 celcius. You simply can't breathe!
It has been absolutely frigid here in Chambéry since last weekend, and supposedly it should start warming up around Sunday, so we are all hoping for the best. It has been unbearably cold. Around -18 some nights! On the bright side though, the bitter cold has allowed the snow to stay around in some places, meaning it has stuck for 9 days which is pretty impressive.
Ok well actually I am going to get back to work now, but I just wanted to keep you all up to date. And at the end of the week I will give you an updated class list so that you can follow along with my schedule. Bisous!
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