my first week of school in france...

WARNING, UBER LONG AND there is a picture of a dissected mouse below. In case you get squeamish about that.

Well I have survived my first week of school! It's been... a pretty long week I think haha. I'm gonna go through my entiirreeee week, because I haven't blogged in a long time, and I want to spite those who hate my waffling (jokes, ily you guys but yeah, read more. it's good for you :) )

MONDAY:

I don't remember it too well now, but we had badminton in the morning for EPS (PE). You'd think I owned up, but no, they had child sized racquets so I kept missing. It's actually the biggest handicap you can give to someone who knows how to play a sport LOL, give them different sized equipment...

Had maths, found it difficult due to the different notation and french instructions lolol. Example? K, their way of writing x>0 is like this: Xε]0;+∞[
don't even get me started with the unions etc etc, I don't even really get it still lolol.

Went to geo myself since Blanche had another class. A guy offered to help me out and share his book, but he talked really fast and it was hard for me to get anything in that class lol... also since it's the first geo lesson I've ever had in my life haha @@ I skim read the textbook later and learnt some basic theory (ie. society + environment + economy = durable community). It's pretty interesting as a class, and I learn a lot of new vocab from it. As for the actual content... well, it's hard for me to pick much up haha.

French was terrible. They're doing Moliere's Dom Juan right now and ofc I hadn't read it, and I couldn't understand wtf she was talking about, so I just fell asleep. she also did some dictation and I couldn't keep up because ofc since I don't speak french I can't just make stuff up or guess what the rest of the sentence is once I get the general gist of it after hearing it, like you can do in english. Being in a foreign country is really hard! I tried to copy off the girl next to me, but they all have really loopy and fancy handwriting so it was a bit hard at times... Wikipediaed Dom Juan later, as well as Antigone, Les Bonnes, and Madame Bovary. I'm getting so cultured! :P

Went home, I was a bit confused when we started going up into a bakery, but it turns out that's the shortcut through to the main road from school. That bakery must get sooo much business haha. I bought a pain au chocolat :) the first of many that will make me fat, I'm sure...

Met up with the NZ ppl at the bookshop and went out for dinner at an italian restaurant cuz it was will's birthday :)

TUESDAY:

I can't really remember this day, it was largely insignificant I think. Well I had my first english class, it was quite good. There was a cute blonde guy wearing an extremely flamboyant coat (similar to the pirate captains), who I think was in an older class, but he came back for that 1 lesson. I think he did some time in england as an exchange student or something, because the teacher said "you act the same, but you look and sound more english", to which he replied "if looking english means very sexy, I agree with you" hahaha. But he got kicked out later for talking too much :P still, was entertaining.

I wagged an FLE class (french for noobs like me) in the afternoon since the teacher said he was gonna be late and I didn't feel like sitting through 1.5 hours of free period to get half an hour of class. But no, my host parents got called cuz of half an hour of wagging wtf ): gayyyyy.......

WEDNESDAY:

Short day! :) French wasn't so bad because we watched a film, so it was much easier to follow than the first day. Then for some reason I was able to not go to the other half of french, so I went to the chinese takeaway to get lunch. There, I met another chinese girl from the school with her friend, and I asked if I could eat lunch with them :) Everyone had a maths test that afternoon so I helped them out a little, then I went to meet the other NZers at louis le grand. We were gonna go eiffel tower, but the top was closed (again...), so I went to centre pompidou with Nick and Olivier.



It was probably my favourite place I've visited so far. I had this moment of revelation when we were going through the mondrian exhibit while olivier was being skeptical about what his squares are really about hahaha. The way I see them, they are not supposed to be pieces of 'art' per se in themselves, but are instead compositions and exploration of the effects of the proportions between closed spaces. He explores the way these spaces affect human perception and whether they make us feel uncomfortable or whether we find them aesthetically pleasing. This explains why he delved into architecture (stained glass windows etc) as well. In a way, mondrian's neoplastic squares were the beginnings of modern architecture. Note how recent buildings are quite square and minimalistic, yet we find them aesthetically pleasing. It is actually quite difficult to design squares in a way that looks good as a building (if you don't know what you're doing). Anyone who has tried to build a house on the sims starting with a single rectangle will know this. This is why I appreciate Mondrian's genius more than most people would (olivier included :P). To have such a good understanding of space and the effect space has on our senses is quite simply awesome :) Anyway though I was pretty tired cuz we spent soooo long walking around in the museum. My feet were really sore when I got home haha. But a day well spent!


THURSDAY:

Jesus Christ. This was such a long day. I started school at 9am, expecting to have english, but it turns out that the teacher wasn't there that day, so we had a free. I ran into Lydia outside the english room so that was nice :) Spent the free period catching up with her. Then I had SES which is like economics, and they had a test which obviously I couldn't take because I haven't done it before so I sat next to Yilin and watched her do it, looked up some words in my dictionary and went to sleep.

The Latin teacher wasn't there either so I spent the free with Blanche and Yilin, then for some reason I decided to follow her to a maths class that wasn't on my timetable and was quite possibly the most boring thing I've had to sit through since French on the first day. They were doing simplication of fractions and surds and indices. And they were just going over homework the whole period so .... =_= i didn't learn anything.

After that was lunch, then I had FLE again. It's getting to be quite enjoyable since all we do is chat haha, and it's a good time to improve my french. Then I had maths for the 2nd time where I sat next to this guy who didn't know how to use his TI83. Despite never having doing programming on my TI, I was able to help him out hahaha :) even though I have no idea what the program was for at all lol.

Followed Blanche to her chinese geography lesson. The teacher was so french looking for a chinese guy. I think it's just the style of dress. Like you can tell he's a Parisian... it's weird, and hard to explain. I learnt a lot of geo, and the class spent about 10 minutes interrogating me as I did my self introduction so they could improve their chinese. I was quite impressed with the level of their chinese actually haha. And some chinese exchange students are coming on the 22nd :) It's so convenient that I'm chinese haha.

Okay so now it's 5pm, most ppl can go home, but nooo I get to go to arts plastiques. I thought it was gonna be pretty cool cuz they did sculpture last week (like, little heads out of clay) and some sketches that I recognised as exhibition pieces from centre pompidou :O what a coincidence... but no, we did abstraction. Ffff... like the only thing I'm completely unfamiliar with and dislike doing. Like wtf... Anyway I had no idea wtf I was doing and my piece ended up looking quite ordinary and random, just like everyone else's.

8pm finish, went home. Bought a pain au chocolat and walked home the long way cuz I felt like it.

FRIDAY:

English first thing in the morning, it's actually rather difficult because we have to translate from french --> english and english --> french. A bit ironic that the reason I find english class hard is because of the french... hahaha can't be helped I guess. It seems everything I do is improving my french though, which is good :)

I was late for physics/chem because I couldn't find the classroom I was supposed to be in and I got pwned by the teacher lololol... I walked in without knocking and he made me go back outside and knock and then come in hahaha, and then he was like "..well?" and i was like ":O I'm late." and he was like "yes I can see that, go sit down" hahahahaah... they had a test that I had to join in as well. The chem questions were easy, the physics one I couldn't understand because they were in french. Also I couldn't respond to the ones I could understand because I had to respond in french obviously. There was a fire drill during the test as well so I had even less time to rummage through my dictionary lol... kind of annoying @@ a girl asked me if I wanted the answers to the test during the drill haha but it's against my morals to cheat :P plus I don't care if I get a shitty mark, so I was like "I understand nothing, but nahhh it's okay :)"

After that I went to Chinese, where we read a piece on friendship. Most people got the general meaning, I was able to read almost all the words which is good. I think my chinese might improve while I'm here as well, since I have to talk to the chinese teachers, Yilin and some others in chinese haha. It's good! This trip to france is so good for me :P

Had SVT after 2 frees, which is like bio. Had to borrow a labcoat from a guy in my class who had physics that period, kinda got some blood and guts over it so felt a bit bad about that, hopefully he didn't notice...



Dissections are the only good things about studying bio. :P haha and the girl in front of Blanche and me took her tweezers and made the tongue of our mouse poke out as if it was dead like the animals in the cartoons hahaha. she couldn't do that with her own one because she had a frog. But I thought that the people here are a lot less squeamish about dissections than back at home. well the other girl in our group was quite disgusted but I don't think anyone else was affected that badly. They did smell like dead things though..

Had physics again, we were doing a simulation and modelling a ball in freefall. I found it extremely frustrating because I know how to do it, but I can't express myself because I can't speak french, and when other people make mistakes I want to correct them but I can't because they are convinced that they are correct but I can't convey my logic in a good way because I CAN'T SPEAK FRENCH... arghhh ): so frustrating!!!

went home after that, was pretty tired, bought a pain au chocolat as usual on the way back through the bakery.

ALSO: this cereal is the most addictive thing ever

I took a handful as I got home with a glass of milk. Omg I'm not gonna be able to eat much for dinner tonight hahaha... gonna get fat from cereal hahahahaah...