when everyone knows you're american...

Yesterday we started our U of M classes, which are from 10-1 this week. This leaves the afternoon wide open for adventures. The class is a typical University of Michigan French class....meaning loads of put-you-to-sleep French and Francophone history. I guess that's why this class counts as humanities credits. Who even knows what we are learning about, just another variation of the same boring history we learned about in 231 and 232...this time we say its focused on immigration. All I can say is that after only 2 days I am bored out of my mind thinking that I will definitely have to bullshit my way through every single discussion and assignment...including the 5-7 page final paper, awesome. I mean for someone who doesn't understand poetry in English, don';t even try asking me about French poetry. I'm a lost cause. I'll just have to make sure Patrick likes me. P.S. he is incredibly attractive, so I wouldn't want him to dislike me, even though there is already a ring on his finger.

Besides the boring subject matter, the pros are that I like my classmates, we are a small class (7 of us) which is nice, and of course: Patrick.

So on to the fun stuff. I've noticed the past few days that no matter where we go, from a hundred feet away, pretty much everyone knows we are American. Perhaps it is the clothes we wear, our camera's occasionally flashing at mundane things (for the French), or our exuberant attitudes. Probably all of the above, along with our maps, our broken french (or when we've given up, our English) and our tendancy to travel in packs. The French people's reaction to us varies.

When I bought my "portable" the woman let me get about 3 broken sentences out before saying, "You speak English?" and we continued from there in English, with much less difficulty. When we order at restaurants we usually do pretty well, because we've had time to figure out exactly what were going to say. But if they ask a complicated question about exactly what we want, well, it all goes out the door. At the Victor Hugo Plaza...there have been incidents. The first involved a group of middle school-aged boys..who as soon as we sat down to do our homework (before we even had our French-English dictionaries out!) began yelling profane phrases at us to try to get some sort of reaction. We attempted to ignore them and stared intently at our papers. Today at the fountain four of us were dipping out feet and wading to cool off, and some obnoxious teens decided to divert the water from the fountain in our direction, to soak us. after the 2nd or 3rd incident, we gave up and left the park. So my impression so far is that the young French people like to bother the Americans because they think our reactions are funny. The older French either find us endearing or just annoying.

After just 3 days I feel I have come a long way; I am more engaged at dinner time, and more confident in my speaking. I think the adjustment to the time zone has been a big factor in my improvement. Today I went swimming at our pool here, but the pool was over 90 degrees, so that wasn't all too refreshing. Tomorrow it may rain, which is a wonderful thing if that means it will cool off finally. The heat isn't terrible because the humidity is low, but it is very tiring. Overall I am adjusting well and think I will really enjoy my time here. Downtown is a beautiful and wonderfully busy place to be (except on Sundays-it is a ghost town). I finally got to run at a park today that Frieda (one of our instructors who lives with me) showed me. I hope to go a few times a week to stay in shape. Although, the amount of walking we do daily could definitely keep me in pretty good shape!

Time to set the table for dinner. Au Revoir!

Victor Hugo Plaza-that I mentioned above