welcome to the inside of my head (good luck...!)

Okay...I officially enjoy saturdays that AREN'T packed full of things to do. It gives me time to breathe and do things like sleep and homework and updating my blog and enjoying Nantes. What a concept, n'est pas?

Okay. Speaking of homework, I feel like I should prolly let you all know what my courses are like! Some of them are fantastic, some of them are mediocre, and one of them is admittedly horrendous.

I've got my three litt courses at the fac - Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Les Fables de la Fontaine, and La Princesse de Clèves. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is by far my favorite course of the semester - mostly because of the prof! M Zonza is one of (if not THE!) best professor I've ever had! He's one of those profs that you can tell is incredibly intelligent, but he's so approachable and personable and FUNNY. He was reading out loud in class one day and I'm pretty sure he's been an actor in a previous life. When reading a passage by Cécile, and incredibly infantile and idiotic 15 year old girl, M Zonza actually used a high-pitched, little girl voice! He had the whole class in stitches, it was fantastic!! He's also the prof for Les Fables de la Fontaine, so he makes that class bearable too...the text is harder to get through, though. Les Liaisons is 18th century, les Fables 17th; it's amazing the difference one century can make! La Princesse de Clèves, however...that one's 17th century as well, but it's at 8 in the morning and Mme Redot isn't NEARLY as engaging as M Zonza. La Princesse is the horrendous one...I dread tuesday mornings. but I'm pretty sure it'll count for a women's studies credit, and I need 2 of those while I'm here.

My 3 courses at IES are all pretty good...grammar is grammar, there's nothing terribly exciting to tell for that course - I just hope it'll help! French Writers and Foreign Nations is fun...though the litt courses at the fac make it seems très...facile =D (very easy). The prof is a cute old man who asks every ten minutes "avez-vous des questions, s'il vous plaît?" (do you have any questions, please?). It kind of reminds me of the regularity of my highschool chorus teacher's "Some annoucements!" at the end of every chorus period! The last class is France and the Atlantic World (16th-18th centuries) which is good because I've never taken a French history class. The one thing in that class that drives me nuts is when my classmates laugh every time our prof tries to say an english name/phrase. Granted, he has a VERY thick accent and I won't lie, it is entertaining - but I feel bad for him...our FRENCH accents sounded that bad at one point...I'd've given up forever if a native french speaker laughed at me every time I tried.

Other than school, life is...life is pretty good. I had a rough spot of homesickness yesterday since Cabaret opened at Wooster and I wasn't there to see my girls perform...plus I was exhausted from a really long week. It was just one of those realizations that I'm not going to be home for 8 more weeks and won't be at Wooster for another 10 months. But my girls and I are going out dancing tonight and I've had a nice relaxed day, so that's helping. but I also realized some of the things I miss about the states (and this is not counting the people, otherwise you'd be here for hours reading the world's longest post):
-dryers. only for some things, like hoodies or towels. they're just not nearly as comfy when they're line dried
-milk. the milk here is demi-écremée...half cream. so basically, it's half and half. basically, I haven't had milk since I was in the states =D
-classes being done by 4pm at the latest. having class from 5.30-6.30 is...not so much fun
-(and here's my incredibly nerdy one) the academic environment at Wooster. Most all of my classes here are lecture classes...I miss discussion classes. I miss Wooster's writing-intensive, critical-analysis atmosphere. I went to a conférence (public lecture) on "société d'hyperconsommation et l'individualisme" (society of hyper-consumerism and individualism) on tuesday and it was so the kind of lecture Wooster would have held...and then for my FWFN midterm I actually had FUN writing the essay. Granted, you should never let a women's studies major write about "la condition féminine"...she'll start writing about feminist discourse. I kid you not, I really did. I hope prof Millany's ready for that paper...it was DEFINITELY a women's studies paper!
-(my other nerdy one) women's studies courses in particular. they just don't exist here, and I never realized how much I really do enjoy those courses at home and how much they energize me...

and I'm done being a nerd now =D

I think I'm going to go read some Dangerous Liaisons...it's such a good book! (...and such a scandalous book!)

à+!