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| A modern French classroom. |
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| The usual desks and chairs arrangement |
Well, another day done. My classes are all about French. I have a couple
of instructors and a small class size. We're from all over the globe!
French it seems, is still an important language. My class work is split
into long days and short days. A couple days we go morning and afternoon
with a long break at lunch time; other days we're done at lunch time
with the afternoons off. It seems lots of places shut down for lunch
still, even in a city like Avignon, and the University follows the
pattern too.
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| The stone walls are amazingly thick! |
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An elegant central stairway, dating
from the 18th century. |
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My classes are
mostly review for me right now, but I'm sure that will change. In the meantime some of my real world experiences have been the most challenging, like yesterday when I went to the bank to purchase a money order to pay the rent at the Foyer! I made it through that with the help of the kind
Guichet (clerk) there. So after that, it's a
bit less stressful because I don't have to figure out how to get another
mandat postal!
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| A French money order |
Most of the people in my class seem to speak a
combination of French and English, and between the two, they are pretty comprehensible. In my class there are 10 people, one from Spain, also from
Mexico, Cuba, Bulgaria and four from China. The one thing that may make it tough going is that a
couple of the Chinese students don't speak very clear French and no English. It can be quite a game of pictionary to understand each
other!
The university building where our classes are held is interesting. Some parts of it are very old; I
feel like I should be wearing Harry Potter's wizard style robes! Other
parts, most of it really, are quite modern. It looks like the building
has been heavily renovated, so the inside of the class rooms look like
any other university. This is a really old University. It was formed in 1303 and was a Royal institute until the French Revolution of 1792. It makes EIU seem like a wink in someone's eye!
