I have officially had all of my classes (except for the Art ones, so not really) at the Sorbonne! This week my two conferences started, and I had my first week of phonetics. Technically.. I'm still in the middle of it. On Monday along with grammar I had my first "conference," in a lecture hall with about 150 students (rough estimate, but there were a lot!) The class is based completely around French film, and the professor started out introducing the different generations of film (very similar to American, but it seems like they were comedically oriented before we were). The rest of the class period (it's two hours) we watched a movie called Oscar.. a 1960s comedy that made no sense plotwise but was absolutely hilarious. I reccommend it.. even if you need the subtitles!
The second class was on Tuesday- a 2 hour Histoire de l'Art Francais. The professor is great! He wrote out a huge bibliography of great books to use, as well as already typed out the information for each piece we review. In order. He also played a song for us by a famous French singer from the 1800s, who was actually for the inspiration for a number of Toulouse-Lautrec's drawings and a slew of other advertising campaigns! It was cool- cause you see her face everywhere. Her name is Yvette Gilbert. This is one of Toulouse-Lautrec's prints...
Anyway! Enough about classes. NICE! Absolutely an amazing weekend. Not what I expected at all... I was kind of thinking that the idea of Carnaval would make it a huge party all weekend, so it was a little intimidating. Nice is a pretty big club town... but it is absolutely gorgeous! And it didn't turn out to be like that at all. The parade on Saturday night was excellent- there were huge floats with different characters and themes- kind of crazy, like one was a huge woman's head and her mechanical arm was "eating" the head of Sarkozy (haha) and another was a giant dragon skeleton that was breathing smoke. It went on for a few hours, and there were silly string and confetti fights everywhere! What a fun night.
Of course.. one of the best parts was the run. Right by the crystal clear water, along a promenade that stretches along the entire city's coast. We also stayed outside on Sunday morning, and the 60 degree sunny weather was perfect for sitting on the black pebbles that make up their beach.
I forgot to mention the food! All Italian style- gelato, lots of pasta and pesto. Yummmmmmm :)
Anyway, so great week! It was good to spend a weekend with everyone from Central, we really don't see each other together that often, so it was refreshing.
And honestly- it's just so amazing that most of my daily interactions are in French. I know I keep talking about it, but it's insane! There are definitely still the slip-ups in understanding, but even watching the movie the other day with only French subtitles and sitting through 2 two hour lectures (understanding pretty much all of both) is pretty sweet.
I went on another beautiful run today, through the Tuileries and around the Louvre! I think my goal for Friday afternoon is to go and just meander, since I am sorry to say I have yet to go inside. (On this trip at least)
A bientot!
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