Culture shock

Peur du jour- 1 fevrier 2012: Moving on

J'ai passé une matinée épouvantable. 

 Yesterday a delightful cold front came in. It brought rain, gray skies, and below freezing temperatures (it actually snowed yesterday). It's not that I don't like the cold (sometimes I really miss my midwestern winters when I'm in NC), it's just that I am not terribly prepared for it. I don't have a winter coat here because I didn't think it would be worth the space to bring it. None of the shoes that I would care to wear in public (not going to wear my slippers or my running shoes around France.. super tacky) are loose enough to permit me to wear thick socks. I left my heavy scarf, hat, and TOASTY mittens back  home.

So okay, I'm cold when I'm in transit. Not a big deal. What is a bigger deal is that I'm cold inside too. My winter woes at home have been solved due to the slightly-embarassing-but-very-toasty-so-I-don't-really-care snuggy that my mom sent me (the best part of my day is when I wrap myself up in it like a burrito before I snuggle into bed). Today I learned that French classrooms can be just as freezing as French homes. Trying to pay attention in class is really hard when your toes are going/have gone numb.

Paying attention in class is also really hard when the people behind you won't stop whispering about the cross word they are doing, rustling through some sort of plastic bag, and laughing at the conversation they are having. This professor is already hard enough to follow: he doesn't talk slowly enough to allow for note taking, he doesn't write anything on the board, and he frequently spirals into anecdotal tangents which may or may not be important (not to mention it's in French...). The last thing I need is noise from the peanut gallery.

What's more frustrating is that this is part of the culture here. I'm not even sure if it's considered disrespectful. The professor doesn't seem to care and doesn't say anything about it (not even a dirty look!) during the two hour class period (yeah, two hours). This means that I can't say anything about it. It is honestly one of the most frustrating things I have had to deal in the 14.5 years I've been in school.

So I leave class and I'm kind of ticked off. And it's still cold and the tram is PACKED and I'm tired of smelling body odor and I'm more sick of being harangued in the street by people demanding that I give them money. When I get home, I still can't feel my toes so instead of going for a run, I just sit in my room with my feet (wrapped in three pairs of socks) on the luke-warm radiator feeling sorry for myself. I was in the hole.

And I clawed my way out. I got off my butt and braved the cold to go for a run. Exercise always makes me feel better (endorphins, music, feeling of accomplishment, warmth!). Each stride was me pulling away from my bad morning and running towards the hope that this class has to get better.

I've decided that culture shock is just like a big magnifying glass on my life. My highs are really high and my lows are pretty low.  I've tried be fairly discrete about them and focus on the highs thus far, but the lows are just as big a part of me discovering the culture here. The thing I've resolved to do is to move on and keep pushing forward. There is something that God wants me to learn from my low points, my frustrating mornings, and my bouts of homesickness. Nothing under His control is out of control.

Hodgepodge

Short post (because I said I would).

I haven't been particularly daring lately because I'm starting to get into a routine... I love my routine like my dog loves to bark (a lot). But here a few French gems:


1) A Canadian student moved in here on Sunday and has been way more stereotypically American than me. She requested bacon and eggs for breakfast, talks and laughs pretty really loudly, takes long showers, asked if she could keep alcohol in the refrigerator, and puts ketchup on EVERYTHING. Potatoes (not that weird), chicken cordon blue (getting weird), and fettucini alfredo (does not in any way need ketchup). To each her own, I guess. :)

2) The French should learn how to insulate their homes. I have two huge windows/balconies in my room and because there's no centralized heating, my room is always like an igloo. I've resorted to placing all of my clothes on the radiator (which never gets very warm) before I change into them to give me some added warmth. Right now I'm wearing three pairs of socks, two sweaters, leggings under my jeans, AND headphones as earmuffs and I can't stop shaking. It makes me miss the stifling hot hallways of Joyner hall.

3) I ran a new path by the river today! It was pretty awesome because there's this big grassy path along the river bank with a dirt trail. I need green spaces and this is definitely one of them. Exercise has earned an even dearer spot in my heart because it's the only time of day (other than when I'm snug under my covers or the moments of my shower when the water is on) when I actually feel warm.

4) I have been spending more time figuring out travel plans for our February break that I have spent studying/doing homework. This needs to stop now. Off to work on a paper!

Love from France,
Kathleen

Occupy the tram back to centre-ville!

J'ai fait une gaffe! (I made a mistake) I'm not exactly sure if I have people anxiously waiting on the edge of their seats on Wednesdays thinking that I am going to post (probably not), but if there are those people, I am terribly sorry that I forgot to post yesterday. I was kind of in a funky, homesick mood and all I wanted to do was climb under my covers (because it is trop froid in this house) and read Harry Potter à l'école des sorcières.

Peur du jour- 11 Janvier 2012: Knowing when to walk out 

Yesterday I attended two fairly lousy courses at the lovely UPV III. For those of you who don't have a facebook or haven't seen the pictures, here are some lovely pictures of the lovely university that will illustrate how lovely it is.

These pictures are fairly generous too. Add clouds of smoke and rowdy French étudiants to the mix and it is just downright charming. But, I am not in France to attend a beautiful University (I already have one of those!). I'm in France to learn the culture and become 10x better at speaking French and have the adventure of a lifetime. UPV III is part of this French culture. Students don't pay very much in the form of student fees so the result is a university on which there is not constantly construction and renovation. So I've come to grips with the less than idyllic campus. But yesterday, I was forced to confront another difference: French classrooms.

On Tuesday I went to a great course. The professor was easy to understand, he wrote very clear notes on the board, and I found the subject matter interesting. I'm thinking "Great! I have this course if I need it, but I also want to go to two courses tomorrow that sound just as interesting!" Wednesday morning rolls around and onto the campus saunters a bright-eyed bushy-tailed Kathleen at 8h00, ready for Droit du travail (labor law) and Crises Internationals (International Crises) . I went to the front row of the classroom and sat with my pencil poised to write down every French word emitted from the professors mouth onto my weird, French lined paper. Here are some differences I noticed:

1. Class time is more of a suggestion: At UNC, you can count on there being some people in the classroom at least 10 minutes before. The professor (unless they are just coming from another class or something else) is usually there 5 minutes beforehand. In France, it's more likely that the students will arrive between the starting time and 10 minutes late and the professor will arrive between 5 and 10 minutes late. Those of you who know how freaky I am about being on time can probably understand how troubling I found this.
2. Bibliographies (reading lists) are about 10 miles long. In one class I went to, the professor spent 45 minutes of a 3 hour class talking about what we should read. On the list was the complete memoirs of Henry Kissinger. In another class, the professor pulled out a law manual. I know that as a foreign student, I'm not expected to be able to navigate through these texts. Our program director told us to ask the professor on which texts we should focus. However, I don't understand how the average French student (who I'm told studies far less than the average American student) gets through these lists. The answer: they're not. 
3. Attention is optional: Something that I've heard is common and which I have experienced is that students do whatever they want in class. They talk (loudly), file their nails, text, and do a myriad of other distracting things (I swear I could smell nail polish). In this particular class, the professor didn't even reprimand them. She just said "there are a lot of you, so if you could maybe talk a little less, that would help me save my voice." Professor Kathleen would be kicking students out of class or at least making some sort of effort to lessen the riff-raff.

So, you're in a (3 hour long) class and its terrible. You're thinking "I could be running some errands, buying lunch, working on homework, or doing ANYTHING other than sitting here, taking notes for a class in which I have no intention of enrolling, surrounded by students who really don't care." If you find yourself in this situation, do what I did in both of my classes yesterday: leave during the break.

I have never dropped a class or skipped a class or missed a class in my college career. This isn't exactly on the same level as any of those things, but leaving the class on the first day during the break is a little uncharacteristic of me. My new phrase is "When in Montpellier."

As my friend Tyler would say, "the moral of the story is": Follow your gut. Don't waste your time. Don't be too worried about offending someone that you're likely never going to see again. Don't ever take a class where the professor spends 30 minutes talking about how great a guy Henry Kissinger is.