It is currently raining and very cold. I think this is normal weather for the time of year; apparently Strasbourg gets a LOT of rain. It was raining when I woke up and as I'm about to go to sleep, it is still raining. I'm afraid that the four days of beautiful weather that graced Strasbourg upon my arrival were fleeting.
I braved the bitter cold on Monday morning to go to my first class at 10:00. It was my obligatory language block class - a group of 15-20 students who are in my same level of French. We meet for 10 hours every week and have four different teachers who teach our level on different days of the week. In addition to the ten hours of language block, I have a lot of "option" classes from which I can choose. The option classes meet once a week for one hour. I'm going to as many as I can this week but I've really liked almost all of the ones I have visited so far. Eventually, I'll have to pick out 8-10 classes that I want to take. This will put me in class for about 20 hours a week. A few of the classes I've visited so far and really liked are: French Society in Song, Advanced Grammar, Linguistic Diversity, Street Languages, Teaching French, Art History, Theatrical Survey, Geopolitics, World Philosophies, and Literary Movements. That makes ten already and I still have Thursday's and Friday's option classes to go to... I think I'm going to have a hard time choosing my classes!
What I've noticed about classes in Strasbourg is that there is a lot less discussion in class. The teacher stands up in front of the class and talks for an hour and it's up to you to decide what's important and what to write down. Occasionally the professor will write things on the board but it's not much and it's not enough to just copy what they write on the board. (I went to the International Relations class today, he mumbled for an hour about European governmental institutions and occasionally scribbled a word or a date on the board. It was hard to take notes.)
A wonderful thing about classes in France: I only need to buy one book (for my language block class) and it will probably cost less than the equivalent of thirty dollars. I'm used to spending at least $400/semester on books at Longwood so this will be a very welcome change.
More about classes at the end of the week!
theatrical survey does not sound too interesting... and also... it figures that you would pick advanced grammar, geopolitics, and literary movements. i approve of world philosophies and geopolitics and the teaching french classes because they will be useful to you in the future and street languages will be fun.... let me know about the other classes!!!
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