I spent today (Friday: I know it's complicated) mostly at Reid Hall, the academic home base of the Vassar-Wesleyan Paris Program (VWPP henceforth). A few thoughts about this building...
The front door of this place has a doorframe that isn't level with the ground... it comes up about 4 inches (more if you're either counting in metric or happen to trip over it). Now, maybe it's about keeping dirt or rain out, but I suspect that it's really just that the designers of this building had it in for people with wheelchairs (or just, people with feet). Otherwise, it's still sort of peculiar... very narrow winding hallways and low ceilings (though most Parisian buildings seem to have been designed under the assumption that I would be born without a forehead). It was also kind of cold. I'm not wild about it yet, but that's also because they spent a good three hours talking at us about things like how to be safe walking around and how not to get pickpocketed (today's French lesson: "pickpocket" = "pickpocket").* Useful information, but many of us were nodding off and on throughout. I did try to stay awake, however, while part of the lecture was handled by the pretty Parisian girl taking Film classes at the Sorbonne.
Afterward, we went to a mall so everyone else could buy phones (I happened to get my hands on a European phone in the U.S. and brought it over). We all traded numbers. It was adorable. Today's other French lesson: "text" [as in 'text message'] = "texto". Also, the mall was fairly similar to the American ones I've experienced... this one was near the heart of the city, so it had a lot of exits and looked just a little run down, but the idea seemed to survive translation from the U.S.
After the mall, we went on a boat tour up and down a patch of the Seine. It was nighttime by this point, but we still saw Bateaux Mouches (a famous restaurant/nightclub literally on the water), the smaller replica Statue of Liberty (it indeed had a French designer, but then, so does the traffic-plagued Washington, D.C.). There were a lot of neat bridges, a lot of French buildings, the Eiffel Tower, and more. I took many pictures and now I don't know how to label most of them.
We then returned to the Hostel for dinner. Most of us sought the lobby's 30 minutes per person of free wi-fi (pronounced "why-fy" in the U.S. and "wee-fee" over here). I then went to bed.
TOMORROW, on "(215) Days of Europe"...
Andy meets his host family! Will they be everything he hopes? Will their children help him with his French or make his life a living "cauchemar"?!** Will he be near his friends? How will he get back to Reid Hall? And will he EVER figure out where the arrondisements are and which one is his??? Find out next time on "(215) Days of Europe"!
G'night, America.
-Andy
*There are a lot of these, but, as many annoyed French students will tell you, they're never the ones you expect. The result is that you inevitably look like an idiot. Either you assume something's the same in both languages and Mamadou (your uniquely distractable Senegalese high school French teacher) scolds you, or you admit you don't know the damn word and Monsieur corrects you with a "Really? Couldn't figure that one out?" tone of voice before the word in question reminds him of that time he was the captain of the Senegalese soccer team and they had to play this big match against...
**"Nightmare" in English. 10 Bonus points if you got that on your own. 15 More bonus points if you can Skype me (andy.j.weiner.17) and correctly pronounce "C'est une nouvelle année" in one try before my parents do.
No comments:
Post a Comment