Move, Quasimodo. Get out the way

We met at the Accent Center this morning at 10am and it took me about 35 minutes to get there from my house via métro. It was really cool seeing everyone after their first night with their host families and seeing everybody get so excited over the simplest things, like how French people only put one type of food on their plate at a time or how French keys look really funny. Last night at dinner, le Monsieur asked me what the capitol of Michigan is. I didn’t think it was an odd question until I found out this morning that every other student was asked the same question by their host father… French men must have some odd fascination with state capitols or something.

We had a quick orientation meeting that pretty much just told us how to not get mugged on the métro. They spent way too long talking about it. I could’ve summed it up easily: don’t be a naive, unaware imbecile. We had some free time after, so all of us went into the closest cell phone shop and got prepaid phones with local numbers so we can contact each other outside of school. I’m sure the cell phone shop hated 15 Americans walking in (only two of which speak halfway decent French), all asking for the same phone.

Notre Dame

Shortly after, we took the métro to our University, L’institut Catholique, where we had oral exams to accurately place us into our French classes. We walked around campus for a bit, and then were set free for the day. On my walk home, I ran into a few of my classmates and they invited me to wander around with them. We walked to Luxembourg Gardens, which is beautiful even with no flowers or trees in bloom. I think I’ve found a place to go running :) We decided to walk a little over a mile to Quasimodo's house (some of you may know it as Notre Dame) and spent some time there. I was absolutely terrified of the enormous amount of pigeons that get far too close to humans for my liking

Crazy lady with a pigeon on her head at Notre Dame

We had lentil stew with “sausage” (aka cut up hot dogs) in it for dinner. At one point in our conversation, I mentioned that Americans think that the French can’t stand them. My host family was very surprised to hear that, and Madame thought that because Nicolas Sarkozy (the president of France, who looks like Mr.Bean if you ask me) has a good relationship with America, the people of France follow his opinion. She also said that she thinks that the French are slightly jealous of Americans, if anything.

Affecteusement,

Katie

P.S. The French pronounce WiFi as "wee-fee". It makes me smile every time.