Wooooot. Today is made of win because I'm not doing anything. For starters, I slept until 12:30 and it was glorious. Why? Because in the span of a week I had 10 exams, plus a paper.
The paper was 10 pages long, and a comparison of Camus' L'Etranger (The Stranger) and Balzac's Le Père Goriot. Lee, Veronica, and I wrote the paper together, but it was a pain in the butt to do. Père Goriot was 270 pages of text. Period. No chapters or anything, just continuous story. Ugh. The entire thing was an ordeal, but we got a 14/20, so no one's complaining. I know it looks bad, but it's a B.
The French grade on a scale of 1-20. 10 is average/passing. 18-20 are impossible to get. So 16-17 is A, 14-15 is B, 12-13 C, 10-11 D if you equate it to the American system. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get 16-17 too. So while the honors kid in me is frustrated over having gotten a B, the exchange student in me is glee-ing over having gotten a 14.
Oh, god. Completely unrelated, but I'm looking at Facebook where people are talking about unpacking all their dorm stuff and cleaning their rooms at home and I just realized I'm going to have to do that too. Oh, fail.
Anyway, yeah. 10 exams? Not fun. 6 between Tue-Thu of last week. Two each this past Monday and Tuesday. One I know I got a 15 on. That excites me because it was an oral exam too. Hee. Some of them I think I did well on, some I'm not so sure. I can find out my grades starting May 25, and I will defintely do so.
I have two more classes tomorrow and an exam Monday and then I am DONE. And then I will hopefully catch up on the traveling I never did this semester. D: For now, I'm settling for being lazy and cleaning my room. Kinda contradicting, I know, but my room is a mess and I didn't have time to clean it while I was having an aneurysm over all of my finals. So cleaning my room = less stress = me being more chill. Word.
Showing posts with label U. de Savoie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U. de Savoie. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Yeah, I'm still here.
But nothing interesting is going on in my life. Sorry to disappoint. The most interesting thing right now is that I really like cereal. Oh argh, I just realized I'm out of chocolate cereal and the store closed ten minutes ago. Fail.
Classes are... going. Not well, not badly, just going. I hate the classes, really, because all you do is sit there for 2 hours writing whatever the professor says. There're no textbooks, no quizzes, no homework. No attendance-taking. You just show up, takes notes, and hope you don't fail the exam at the end of the semester. Bah. One of the classes I and most of the other Americans have been wanting to take is a linguistics class. It hasn't met yet and we just thought it would meet the following week. Well today- 8 weeks into the semester, btw- they put up a sign saying "Well this guy's still on strike, sorry. We found someone to teach his grammar class, but not linguistics. Oh and that grammar class is going to meet for FOUR HOURS for each of the next four weeks." If they do that with linguistics I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to take it, which is made of fail. This school is awesome.
...haha, just kidding. >>
Classes are... going. Not well, not badly, just going. I hate the classes, really, because all you do is sit there for 2 hours writing whatever the professor says. There're no textbooks, no quizzes, no homework. No attendance-taking. You just show up, takes notes, and hope you don't fail the exam at the end of the semester. Bah. One of the classes I and most of the other Americans have been wanting to take is a linguistics class. It hasn't met yet and we just thought it would meet the following week. Well today- 8 weeks into the semester, btw- they put up a sign saying "Well this guy's still on strike, sorry. We found someone to teach his grammar class, but not linguistics. Oh and that grammar class is going to meet for FOUR HOURS for each of the next four weeks." If they do that with linguistics I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to take it, which is made of fail. This school is awesome.
...haha, just kidding. >>
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Classes
I didn't go to class at all last week because we missed Monday and Tuesday classes thanks to our orientation things, and there was nothing interesting on Wed-Fri on the schedules they had given us. Classes work like this: You declare your major before you get here. Your schedule is practically made for you; you're required to take classes with everyone in your major each semester, and then you can pick a few from a list of required electives for that specific semester. So instead of having your own personal schedule, you just follow the department schedule; that's posted on bulletin boards in the hallways of the building your department is in. Exchange students can take whatever we please, but they don't make it easy for us and give us all the schedules; we have to go to every department, get a schedule and course descriptions, and figure things out for ourselves.
Most of the classes have no attendance policy. If you want, you can just show up at the end of the semester and take the exam. People come and go as they please. Professors just don't show up sometimes, or will cancel that day without warning (where have I seen this before? Definitely a French thing). You're supposed to check the boards before every class, it seems, because they'll also change the rooms without warning.
Sunday night I made up a schedule that looked pretty interesting and fun. Yesterday, however... well it was definitely interesting. First was Grammaire Ancien Français (Ancient French Grammar). Being the geek I am, I was totally excited. And then we got there and even though I understood all of what the teacher was saying, I had no idea what the material was. She was going through cases of nouns and how to stress syllables and open and closed syllables and things I vaguely remembered touching on in grammar school. It was frustrating. Went to lunch at the Resto-U. That was also frustrating. There was a line to buy tickets, and by line I mean everyone mobbed in front of the ticket counter. The line to go downstairs to the actual dining hall part was way too long at this point, so Juli and I went with Claire and Sarah (both British) and an Italian girl whose name I didn't catch (but it's the equivalent of Cindy, I think?) to the sandwich counter. Those were pretty good. After our 1.5 hour lunch break (!), Sarah, Cindy and I went to a Linguistics class, taught by the Grammar teacher. Same deal; I knew the French, but the technical terms drove me nuts. Following that I went to a beginner Latin class, not realizing that it was a second semester course. I talked to the professor before class started and explained that I was an exchange student, missed last class, and had never had Latin before. Long story short, she said I'd be behind, but if I wanted to put the work into it I could stay in the class and she'd give me last semester's work to catch up on. I said no and left, but I'm thinking about emailing her now and taking her up on the offer. We'll see.
Today I had four classes scheduled, but none of them met. Whee! Apparently no undergrad classes met because there was an open house or something? So I canvassed the boards again and I'm changing a bunch of my classes. Dropping Grammar for Ancient and Biblical Cultures. Possibly dropping that Linguistics class. Picking up some Psych classes. And hoping it all works out because I don't want to change my schedule again. What's killing me is that credit at VCU is based on the hours you spend in class (15 hours = 1 credit), so in order to get 12 credits I need to take 12 classes here since most only meet 16-20 hours per semester. Not. Pleased. Mais c'est la vie.
And now, round 4 of attempting to create a schedule. Hopefully I figure it out and get to go to classes tomorrow. >_>
Most of the classes have no attendance policy. If you want, you can just show up at the end of the semester and take the exam. People come and go as they please. Professors just don't show up sometimes, or will cancel that day without warning (where have I seen this before? Definitely a French thing). You're supposed to check the boards before every class, it seems, because they'll also change the rooms without warning.
Sunday night I made up a schedule that looked pretty interesting and fun. Yesterday, however... well it was definitely interesting. First was Grammaire Ancien Français (Ancient French Grammar). Being the geek I am, I was totally excited. And then we got there and even though I understood all of what the teacher was saying, I had no idea what the material was. She was going through cases of nouns and how to stress syllables and open and closed syllables and things I vaguely remembered touching on in grammar school. It was frustrating. Went to lunch at the Resto-U. That was also frustrating. There was a line to buy tickets, and by line I mean everyone mobbed in front of the ticket counter. The line to go downstairs to the actual dining hall part was way too long at this point, so Juli and I went with Claire and Sarah (both British) and an Italian girl whose name I didn't catch (but it's the equivalent of Cindy, I think?) to the sandwich counter. Those were pretty good. After our 1.5 hour lunch break (!), Sarah, Cindy and I went to a Linguistics class, taught by the Grammar teacher. Same deal; I knew the French, but the technical terms drove me nuts. Following that I went to a beginner Latin class, not realizing that it was a second semester course. I talked to the professor before class started and explained that I was an exchange student, missed last class, and had never had Latin before. Long story short, she said I'd be behind, but if I wanted to put the work into it I could stay in the class and she'd give me last semester's work to catch up on. I said no and left, but I'm thinking about emailing her now and taking her up on the offer. We'll see.
Today I had four classes scheduled, but none of them met. Whee! Apparently no undergrad classes met because there was an open house or something? So I canvassed the boards again and I'm changing a bunch of my classes. Dropping Grammar for Ancient and Biblical Cultures. Possibly dropping that Linguistics class. Picking up some Psych classes. And hoping it all works out because I don't want to change my schedule again. What's killing me is that credit at VCU is based on the hours you spend in class (15 hours = 1 credit), so in order to get 12 credits I need to take 12 classes here since most only meet 16-20 hours per semester. Not. Pleased. Mais c'est la vie.
And now, round 4 of attempting to create a schedule. Hopefully I figure it out and get to go to classes tomorrow. >_>
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Photo dump: Université de Savoie
Présidence building. It's in the city and not on campus, but this is where the International office is.
Restaurant Universitaire (Resto-U) : Dining Hall. Haven't been inside yet because it has crazy hours.
I thought this was cool. "Education in Danger! 360 million for the banks, how much for education?" And details for a protest on Tuesday. Sweet.
Montée Ste. Sébastien - part 1. We have to walk up these every day to school.
Montée part 2. At the top there's a windy curvy road on a hill. And then more stairs to the actual campus.
Side of the gym.
Sweet graffiti on the side of a building. They mark up everything here.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Backlog
So I basically haven't had internet since last Wednesday afternoon, EST. I'm going to post backdated entries here, slowly, until I can figure out whether I can backdate blogger entries themselves. Til then, onward!
*****
14 Jan 2009
I was operating in panic mode yesterday. Today, not so much. I was okay til I brought my suitcases downstairs and flipped out about everything not being able to fit. Left Mom to repack them because I was about to kill something. Packing and I just don’t seem to get along, despite how many times I’ve had to do it. The rest of the day went smoothly. Got aisle seats for both of my flights. I was anxious for my flight to London to just start boarding and take off; I’d had enough of waiting. Usually I hate flying, but I had absolutely no problem this time. The woman in front of me insisted on reclining her seat as far back as it would go, but that was about it. The only time I got anxious was when they didn’t turn on the entertainment system right away; Moulin Rouge was playing and I wanted to watch it. For the millionth time.
15 Jan 2009
Heathrow airport is a pain to get around when you have a connecting flight. But it happens, yeah? So made it through there. They took the liquids out of my carry-on bag to inspect, and after the security lady gave it back to me, I was an idiot and managed to leave it on the counter. >_> I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get arrested for abandoning it or something. I realized I didn’t have it while sitting in a little restaurant and talking to my mother on the phone. Had to go back to security and get it, and the guy there wasn’t happy. Returned to eat my overpriced bowl of fruit and yogurt and my smoothie. Got a venti café mocha from Starbucks immediately following, since I hadn’t slept in a while and felt awful. Slept the entirely of the 1.5 hour flight from London to Lyon. Then spent 3 hours sitting in the train station in the Lyon airport waiting for my train.
There was a guy, Lee, from Virginia Tech at the train station, who had also been on my flight from London. I was too tired/disinterested/skerred to ask if it really was him, since I only recognized him from Facebook and didn't want to be a creep. However, when we almost missed our train because it was retarded and didn’t stop where it was supposed to, we started commiserating. Then we dragged our bags together from the train station to our respective hotels.
From there I wandered around Chambéry for about an hour and a half. Saw the stupid elephant fountain that everyone talks about, saw the castle of the Dukes of Savoy. Saw a bunch of other stuff. Took pictures. Got a panini. Yum. Went back to the hotel, met Juli from Indiana, whom I was sharing a room with, and went to bed at like, 8pm. Wow.
16 Jan 2009
We got up earlyish to check out. The lady at the hotel had told me that there was a place we could leave our bags while we were gone (check out was at noon and we didn't know if we'd be back in time, despite leaving around 845); turns out that place was the hotel lobby. Our stuff turned out to be fine when we got back, but I wasn't pleased because I had to drag my laptop around. We walked with Elizabeth, from Washington, and Victoria, from Tennessee, and Victoria's aunt. Found the dorm, filled out paperwork. Had to go get insurance. Went back, got our keys to our very interesting rooms. Took a cab from the hotel to the dorm with all our bags, because that would not have been a fun walk. Weren't pleased to find out there's no internet here. :(
Everything in France is closed for lunch. Even the restaurants. Because that makes sense. So while wandering around, we went into a bar that didn't say it was closed. And they guy didn't say anything when we went in. He was really nice, and we found out that hey, the bar was closed. Oops. We got croque monsieurs and fries anyway. Those fries were really good. The guy there joked with us, and it was a little difficult because he spoke really quickly, but we got most of it.
For dinner we went to a place called Café de Lyon. Food was really, really good. I have no idea what kind of drink I ordered. It was a kir something and I think it had wine in it? Also pretty good. Some guy came up and took our picture for a website/brochure called "Night People Chambéry." (nightpeoplechambery.com). Picture's not up on the site yet though. From there we went looking for a club. There's one on a corner near us and the sign just said "Le Nightclub." We should have realized there was something weird about it because the windows were covered. But whatever. There was a doorbell to ring to get in, but Elizabeth tried to open it anyway. The door was locked so we walked away. A woman poked her head out and when Elizabeth asked if it was open she said (in French, of course) "Well... yes, but it's only for men." Heh, nice. So we tried to go into a stripclub on our first night here. =D
We wound up at an Irish bar/pub/thing called O'Pogue's, but it was definitely run by French people. I have no idea what kind of beer I had. It was crowded and noisy and some interesting things happened.
17 Jan 2009
Saturday. Nothing of interest, really. Wandered through a market. Went to a bookstore. They had all four Twilight books there, but the names are super different. Instead of Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn they're called fascination, tentation, hésitation, and révélation. I'm half-tempted to buy one and see how different they are, but that would be a total waste of money. We wandered around for about 45 minutes looking for a France Telecom (internet/phone company) store that Juli thought was marked on her map. Turns out that for some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to mark a phone booth on the map. Awesome. So we got frustrated. Met Jill from Mississippi. Elizabeth and Juli bought cell phones. We took the bus to Carrefour, which is pretty much Wal-Mart on steroids. @____@ Need to make a list and go back. Nothing of interest happened later; made dinner, decided not to go out. Whee.
18 Jan 2009
It raaaained. Boo. And nothing is open on Sunday. Like, nothing. Juli and I took our laptops to a café with free wifi. I was disappointed that my crèpe came out triangle shaped like the ones at home. Maybe it's only at to-go places that they come rolled up? :( Had a fun adventure to a butcher shop because Juli wanted chicken. We couldn't remember how to say breast. "White meat" did the trick though. For the rest of the night we stayed in. I cleaned my room and put stuff away. Watched movies thanks to the lack of internet.
19 Jan 2009
Meeting today with the coordinator of the ISEP program here. There are 12 American students. They don't really care here whether we take classes or not, which amused me. Basically we just go to classes, see if we like them, and in three weeks or so tell Laure, our administrative coordinator, which ones we're "in." We can add or drop them as we please. Each department here chooses their own start dates, so some started today and some don't start til mid-February. But we have to go to each department and get their schedule. Fail. Classes only meet once a week for two hours though, so it's quite easy for us to have a 3 or 4 day weekend. Should make traveling fun. They also don't use textbooks like we do. Whee. Credits are something different, which worries me, but for now I just have to pick interesting classes and go. Which is going to be hard considering it's a little over a mile walk to campus, including hiking up some stairs in the side of a hill. And more hills on campus. Yay exercise?
20 Jan 2009
I has a bank account! Took forever for the guy to put in all my information, but I didn't have to do anything except sign papers. Victoria and I went together and alternated being sitting in awkward silence and talking to each other. We missed the 10am Linguistics class we wanted to go to, but it turned out that the professor didn't show up anyway. From there we went to get internets!! Juli had been talking to people on our floor and finally found out where to go to buy some (for realz, we'd heard so many different things from people but all of them turned out to be wrong). I has the modem and it has the wifi, so right now four of us are sharing it. Wheeee~ internets. Officially registered at the school in the afternoon. From there we went into a lingerie shop (by we I mean everyone went in and I followed). Stuff is super expensive here. And small. So we split up and I went shopping for foods. I'm going to be living on spaghetti for the rest of my life; it goes a lonngggg way when you're cooking for one. But it's good with chicken, garlic, veggies, and carbonara sauce. Need to branch out though, which means a Carrefour trip is in order.
After getting the internets set up I spent 2.5 hours on Skype with mom. Wow. And finally caught up on all my emails, Facebook messages, etc. And I have to Skype VCU for my NSEP interview Thursday, which makes me happy for some internets.
*****
14 Jan 2009
I was operating in panic mode yesterday. Today, not so much. I was okay til I brought my suitcases downstairs and flipped out about everything not being able to fit. Left Mom to repack them because I was about to kill something. Packing and I just don’t seem to get along, despite how many times I’ve had to do it. The rest of the day went smoothly. Got aisle seats for both of my flights. I was anxious for my flight to London to just start boarding and take off; I’d had enough of waiting. Usually I hate flying, but I had absolutely no problem this time. The woman in front of me insisted on reclining her seat as far back as it would go, but that was about it. The only time I got anxious was when they didn’t turn on the entertainment system right away; Moulin Rouge was playing and I wanted to watch it. For the millionth time.
15 Jan 2009
Heathrow airport is a pain to get around when you have a connecting flight. But it happens, yeah? So made it through there. They took the liquids out of my carry-on bag to inspect, and after the security lady gave it back to me, I was an idiot and managed to leave it on the counter. >_> I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get arrested for abandoning it or something. I realized I didn’t have it while sitting in a little restaurant and talking to my mother on the phone. Had to go back to security and get it, and the guy there wasn’t happy. Returned to eat my overpriced bowl of fruit and yogurt and my smoothie. Got a venti café mocha from Starbucks immediately following, since I hadn’t slept in a while and felt awful. Slept the entirely of the 1.5 hour flight from London to Lyon. Then spent 3 hours sitting in the train station in the Lyon airport waiting for my train.
There was a guy, Lee, from Virginia Tech at the train station, who had also been on my flight from London. I was too tired/disinterested/skerred to ask if it really was him, since I only recognized him from Facebook and didn't want to be a creep. However, when we almost missed our train because it was retarded and didn’t stop where it was supposed to, we started commiserating. Then we dragged our bags together from the train station to our respective hotels.
From there I wandered around Chambéry for about an hour and a half. Saw the stupid elephant fountain that everyone talks about, saw the castle of the Dukes of Savoy. Saw a bunch of other stuff. Took pictures. Got a panini. Yum. Went back to the hotel, met Juli from Indiana, whom I was sharing a room with, and went to bed at like, 8pm. Wow.
16 Jan 2009
We got up earlyish to check out. The lady at the hotel had told me that there was a place we could leave our bags while we were gone (check out was at noon and we didn't know if we'd be back in time, despite leaving around 845); turns out that place was the hotel lobby. Our stuff turned out to be fine when we got back, but I wasn't pleased because I had to drag my laptop around. We walked with Elizabeth, from Washington, and Victoria, from Tennessee, and Victoria's aunt. Found the dorm, filled out paperwork. Had to go get insurance. Went back, got our keys to our very interesting rooms. Took a cab from the hotel to the dorm with all our bags, because that would not have been a fun walk. Weren't pleased to find out there's no internet here. :(
Everything in France is closed for lunch. Even the restaurants. Because that makes sense. So while wandering around, we went into a bar that didn't say it was closed. And they guy didn't say anything when we went in. He was really nice, and we found out that hey, the bar was closed. Oops. We got croque monsieurs and fries anyway. Those fries were really good. The guy there joked with us, and it was a little difficult because he spoke really quickly, but we got most of it.
For dinner we went to a place called Café de Lyon. Food was really, really good. I have no idea what kind of drink I ordered. It was a kir something and I think it had wine in it? Also pretty good. Some guy came up and took our picture for a website/brochure called "Night People Chambéry." (nightpeoplechambery.com). Picture's not up on the site yet though. From there we went looking for a club. There's one on a corner near us and the sign just said "Le Nightclub." We should have realized there was something weird about it because the windows were covered. But whatever. There was a doorbell to ring to get in, but Elizabeth tried to open it anyway. The door was locked so we walked away. A woman poked her head out and when Elizabeth asked if it was open she said (in French, of course) "Well... yes, but it's only for men." Heh, nice. So we tried to go into a stripclub on our first night here. =D
We wound up at an Irish bar/pub/thing called O'Pogue's, but it was definitely run by French people. I have no idea what kind of beer I had. It was crowded and noisy and some interesting things happened.
17 Jan 2009
Saturday. Nothing of interest, really. Wandered through a market. Went to a bookstore. They had all four Twilight books there, but the names are super different. Instead of Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn they're called fascination, tentation, hésitation, and révélation. I'm half-tempted to buy one and see how different they are, but that would be a total waste of money. We wandered around for about 45 minutes looking for a France Telecom (internet/phone company) store that Juli thought was marked on her map. Turns out that for some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to mark a phone booth on the map. Awesome. So we got frustrated. Met Jill from Mississippi. Elizabeth and Juli bought cell phones. We took the bus to Carrefour, which is pretty much Wal-Mart on steroids. @____@ Need to make a list and go back. Nothing of interest happened later; made dinner, decided not to go out. Whee.
18 Jan 2009
It raaaained. Boo. And nothing is open on Sunday. Like, nothing. Juli and I took our laptops to a café with free wifi. I was disappointed that my crèpe came out triangle shaped like the ones at home. Maybe it's only at to-go places that they come rolled up? :( Had a fun adventure to a butcher shop because Juli wanted chicken. We couldn't remember how to say breast. "White meat" did the trick though. For the rest of the night we stayed in. I cleaned my room and put stuff away. Watched movies thanks to the lack of internet.
19 Jan 2009
Meeting today with the coordinator of the ISEP program here. There are 12 American students. They don't really care here whether we take classes or not, which amused me. Basically we just go to classes, see if we like them, and in three weeks or so tell Laure, our administrative coordinator, which ones we're "in." We can add or drop them as we please. Each department here chooses their own start dates, so some started today and some don't start til mid-February. But we have to go to each department and get their schedule. Fail. Classes only meet once a week for two hours though, so it's quite easy for us to have a 3 or 4 day weekend. Should make traveling fun. They also don't use textbooks like we do. Whee. Credits are something different, which worries me, but for now I just have to pick interesting classes and go. Which is going to be hard considering it's a little over a mile walk to campus, including hiking up some stairs in the side of a hill. And more hills on campus. Yay exercise?
20 Jan 2009
I has a bank account! Took forever for the guy to put in all my information, but I didn't have to do anything except sign papers. Victoria and I went together and alternated being sitting in awkward silence and talking to each other. We missed the 10am Linguistics class we wanted to go to, but it turned out that the professor didn't show up anyway. From there we went to get internets!! Juli had been talking to people on our floor and finally found out where to go to buy some (for realz, we'd heard so many different things from people but all of them turned out to be wrong). I has the modem and it has the wifi, so right now four of us are sharing it. Wheeee~ internets. Officially registered at the school in the afternoon. From there we went into a lingerie shop (by we I mean everyone went in and I followed). Stuff is super expensive here. And small. So we split up and I went shopping for foods. I'm going to be living on spaghetti for the rest of my life; it goes a lonngggg way when you're cooking for one. But it's good with chicken, garlic, veggies, and carbonara sauce. Need to branch out though, which means a Carrefour trip is in order.
After getting the internets set up I spent 2.5 hours on Skype with mom. Wow. And finally caught up on all my emails, Facebook messages, etc. And I have to Skype VCU for my NSEP interview Thursday, which makes me happy for some internets.
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