no trips this week

Seeing as this week was a little less eventful than previous weeks have been, this blog post may end up being a little shorter and a little less exciting. But fret not! I promise many more exciting trips to describe in the coming weeks. My trip to Paris and Poland is coming in 2 weeks (I can’t believe how time is flying!), and we Winnipeggers have decided not to take classes on Fridays so we can do longer weekend trips this term. I guess going on trips all the time isn’t technically what my time in France is supposed to consist of, nor is going on trips the only exciting thing that can happen here. There’s school, extracurriculars, and in this blog post I’m planning on talking a bit about the food here. So stay tuned, these exciting topics (and more!) are to follow!

Let’s start with the most thrilling subject: school. Well, for me school has always been something I’ve loved. I don’t think it’s going to be all that different for me in France. I’m not really sure what I expected school to be like here. I was told on good authority that I needed to be prepared for some bureaucratic headaches and disorganized classes. I guess I can’t really judge my overall experience based on 3 days of classes, but so far it’s been OK. The profs seem normal (not sure if I was expecting them to be scary or what), and the classes are just like classes back home, except the students talk a lot more during class (this would not be tolerated at the UofW), but still manage to take crazy amounts of notes, which I don’t entirely get. It’s great that I can try out courses before “registering” (I use quotation marks because you don’t have to pay or fill out any paperwork to join a class), and so far I’ve tried out 6 courses but I’m only going to stay in 2. Next week I’ll be trying out 7 more, and I’m fairly certain I won’t be staying in all of them. Now to anyone who’s ever taken university classes, this may seem like a lot of courses, but keep in mind that each course is only 1, 2, or 3 hours per week, and many courses have 2 or more components, which I count as separate courses because you do different things in each component. This may all seem vague/confusing, and it is. I’m beginning to understand it and if you’d like I can fill you in on an individual basis. For now though, I’m taking a phonology and a translation class. On Monday and Tuesday I’ll be taking linguistic, morphology and syntax classes as well as another translation class. I’m looking forward to these classes but we’ll see how many I actually stay in. It’s ideal for me because my evening course at DEFLE will count for 3 credit hours, and beyond that, I only need 3 more credit hours to graduate, so I’m not worried about taking too many courses while I’m here.

On top of a few courses, I’d like to focus on doing extracurriculars while I’m here, because that’s something I don’t have time to do at home since I work a lot when I’m not in class. I attended a jazz workshop on Thursday night, to see if they needed singers, and I ended up singing along (in English) to a few songs while a group of people played their instruments. It was pretty awesome and I was pushed out of my choral mentality when the guy running it made me and the other new girl from Belgium (who was in the same boat as me, looking for a choir to join) sing bee bop (is that the term?), free style. There’s also a traditional choir on Mondays, and I’d also like to check this out, but on Monday morning I’ll find out what evenings my FSL class will be held, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to go to it. Beyond choir, there’s a pool on campus that has free swim times every day, so I’d like to try to swim at least once or twice a week this term (I even bought a bonnet de bain –swim cap- so I’m ready!). I don’t think it should be too hard to fit that in, because I won’t have any classes Wednesdays or Fridays. There are lots of sports I could join, but the ones that interest me the most is danse contemporaire (hopefully not too interpretive!) and danse “rock n’ roll”, which I’m just curious about. Also if I’m free Tuesday evenings there’s a Canoe-Kayak group that meets at the pool and apparently they go on regular excursions to the ocean and other lakes (and Tarin, maybe I’ll actually learn how to paddle faster in a kayak!). There are also a lot of cultural events around campus and Bordeaux that I’ll be able to attend, which will always be either free or pretty cheap because I’m a student.

On the subject of extracurriculars, there’s my church. Well, this isn’t technically an extracurricular, but it’s something outside of school. I really like the little church I’ve been attending for 4 Sundays now. I’ve met a lot of people there, mostly international students, just by staying for lunch after the service every time. On Friday I went to a soirée for university students where we ate dinner and ended up playing Taboo in French (and I thought it was challenging in English!). On the 15^th there is another soirée but this one is a little more formal and there’s going to be a speaker coming in from Bordeaux. I’m pretty excited for it. I think I can get used to being part of a small church family, even if only temporarily (don’t worry anyone from Soul reading this, I haven’t and won’t forget you!).

If you’ve scrolled ahead to check out the pictures I’ve posted in this post, you may have noticed that they are all of food or food-related subjects. Seeing as I haven’t done too many photo-taking-worthy things this week, I thought I’d talk a little bit about the food here. I really like a lot of the food I’ve eaten in restaurants, but I obviously can’t afford to eat out all of the time. I have bought quite a bit of food though, although I have been limited to buying items that haven’t needed to be refrigerated. That was, until Friday, cuz I bought a frigo, baby! I got it for 45€ from a girl in another village (our residence buildings are grouped into villages), and I don’t need to get into how I actually got it home here, but suffice it to say it was no easy task. So I went to Auchan on Saturday and bought en extension cord and some dairy products and meat and now my frigo is humming happily in the corner of my room, right by the window (little side note: I was telling Laura that my frigo wouldn’t fit in the corner by my sink, and I said, “Donc je l’ai mis par la fenêtre,” which of course made her laugh, because although I intended to say “So I put it by the window,” I actually said “So I threw it out the window,” which was hilarious to picture. Yaay for my first Anglicism blunder!). Oh and Lauren Partridge, did you notice the magnetic poetry on the fridge in the photo?

So to explain the pictures of all the food, I think it’s cool that a lot of things are tiny here. The picture with the little pitcher standing by my water bottle (that maybe holds less than a litre) was taken at the Sirtaki, a restaurant-cafeteria which in fact is the only place on campus where I can get internet reception. The pitchers are available for students to use, and they are the perfect size to fill several tiny glasses with water. People use the short, small glasses at meals rather than tall ones, which either forces one to drink less or refill one’s glass several times during the meal. The milkshake picture was taken chez McDo, and you can guess what that means. It cost 95 centimes and only came in one size: smaller than a small at a Canadian McDonald’s (and don’t get on my case about going to McDonald’s while I’m in France: I was curious to see if the food tastes the same. It does—weird). The third picture is my little kitchen corner that I’m so proud of. The fourth was a product I stumbled upon yesterday at Auchan, and it was so funny I had to buy it. “Langues de chat” translates to “Cat Tongues” which doesn’t sound as elegant as it does in French, but they are pretty good. The last picture again illustrates the size of the products I’ve bought, as well as some interesting finds (Bolognaise isn’t really a flavour I thought I’d find on chips). In France, manufacturers don’t punish you for being single like they do in Canada (I know well how at home it’s cheaper to buy everything in bigger sizes), and I’ve found the produce to be a lot fresher here, too. I still can’t believe how cheap things are here. To give you an idea of the prices, here’s a sample of what I bought yesterday (just multiply these prices by 1.5 to get the Cdn price): 1L milk (0,63€), 15 eggs (1,55€), Munster cheese (1,69€), a 16-pk, yes 16-pk, of yoghurt (2,32€), 1Kg of clementines (1,35€), a 6-pk of Lay’s chips (1,62€). Crazy, huh? The biggest milk I saw was 1,5L and milk and eggs also don’t come refrigerated when you buy them. I gave in yesterday and bought Nutella, so now I guess I’m really European (seriously, the French love their Nutella: it’s one of the only products I’ve seen that comes in a jumbo size!), but after I finish it, I’ll have another little glass to use. Living as a minimalist is challenging but I’m getting used to it.

Well, I guess I still wrote a lot despite my mostly “uneventful” week, but thanks for reading. Till next time!