Grenoble until today (February 18th), and one other trip to Paris

I last left off having arrived in Grenoble on January 29th; 3 weeks ago tomorrow. I will not get into the nitty-gritty of what happened every day for these past 3 weeks, because frankly much of it has been unexceptional. I will however, give a fairly brief overview of my time thus far.

This may be a good time to describe exactly how my program works. I am studying at Centre Universitaire d'Études Françaises (CUEF), which is a program within the University of Grenoble Stendhal 3. Essentially, people from all over the world come to CUEF to learn French language, culture, and civilization. CUEF offers two tracks: a language immersion track, and a language and culture track. The language and culture track are for people who are out an intermediate level. I opted to do the language immersion track. The first week of class, I took a placement test, that determined my level in France. I placed into A2.1 (which is the 3rd level out of like 10-12). I was very happy to be placed above the first or second level, because it means that my semester at William and Mary really placed off. The other people from my program were placed at different levels. I have class 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. These classes are total French immersion. One of my professors (Jean Bavard) speaks almost no English whatsoever, and has to rely on playing charades and the Internet to explain all idioms and difficult phrases. My other professor (Kristof) speaks a little English, but on very limited occasions. 99.9% of the class is conducted solely in French. Classes are a mixture of grammar exercises, small group assignments, readings, and conversation. At the end of each month, we take a test, and if we pass, we move on to the next level of French. We are able to repeat a class for 2 months if need be, but after that we are forced to move on. This semester, I have one professor (Jean Bavard) who teachers Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, and another (Kristof) who teaches Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The two professors have vastly different temperaments and teaching styles, and so far I think I like the combination. I initially found Jean Bavard intimidating (he was our only teacher for the first two weeks). He is a tall man, probably in his late 30s. Over the course of the weeks, I've really warmed up to him. He is a quirky guy, who I think is a true closet nerd. One day he told me that he played World of Warcraft, and wrote down his guild's website on my binder (www.woodwar.fr). I think he also once compared Carla Bruni to Maria Antoinette (both are foreign first ladies of France). I think I've warmed up to him too, and he's given me some travel advice. The first day of class, however, was utterly terrifying. Our schedule changes each day (some days we start at 8:30, other days at 12:30, some days we have lab and then class, some days class then lab then more class, etc). Our classes started on a Wednesday, and on Wednesday's we start with lab. Starting with lab on my very first day of class was the worst possible outcome. I walk in, and have not an idea of what is going on. I see other people put on headsets, so I do the same. Our teacher starts talking into our headsets, all in French, I am utterly confused. I sort of figured out what we were doing by the end, but not entirely. Worst of all, I didn't realize right way that that was our hour of lab, and I started to think that all my classes would be conducted that way. It was a really horrifying experience. However, after class, when we went into a regular classroom and had a normal grammar style lesson, I began to feel more comfortable. By the end of the week, I had the routine down pat.

The way CUEF works, with month long sessions, people come and go all the time. Some of the students in A2.1 with me had been in Grenoble for 2 months, so are at a much greater speaking level than I am (also a little intimidating). At first, I feared that I had been placed in a level slightly too high for me. After class on the 3rd day, I asked Jean Bavard, who said "ca va," which I might have wrongly assumed meant "you're fine." I ended up sticking with the class, and I really think it was the best option. It is very challenging, especially the labs, but not exceedingly overwhelming. The composition of the class is also interesting. I am the only American in the class, which came as a big surprise. There are two other English speakers in the class, a Swedish girl named Josephine, and a Dutch girl named Adama. Adama's mother is Dutch, and her father is an Anglophone originally from Mali, which I think is a very interesting cultural background. They both speak English nearly perfect, so I've obviously bonded with them more than the other students in my class. I had a very funny encounter with Adama, where she told me that when she was in high school, she used to watch MTV and believed that Americans were all like that. It was an eye-opening conversation for me, as I began to see maybe why Europe holds the views of America that it does; Europe's main encounter is through American pop culture, which isn't exactly the most flattering aspect of our great nation. I've found it very enjoyable to talk to Adama and Josephine about their experiences as Europeans. The other students in my class are Chinese (the majority), one Brazilian girl, a few Koreans, and one Iranian. Everyone is very down to earth and pleasant; there isn't a single person in my class who rubs me the wrong way. I'm very happy to be having such a multicultural experience. I was anticipated classes taught in English, composed of American students, but this is not the case at all.

Classes are difficult, but are getting better. Some days are really good, others more frustrating. I am still waiting to see how this immersion plays out.

The city of Grenoble is interesting. I was expecting the city to be about the size as say, Asheville, North Carolina or Williamsburg, Virginia, but it is much bigger. Population-wise, Grenoble is comparable to Savannah, Georgia or Springfield, Illinois. There is a large immigrant population of North Africans and Italians. Grenoble is in the Southwest of France, right on the border of France and Italy. In the 1970s when Italy was experiencing a economic depression, many Italians immigrated to Grenoble. There is even a part of the city called the Italien Quartier (literally Italian neighborhood), composed almost entirely of Italians. The neighborhood has its own stores, radio stations, and soccer teams. It is one part of the city I'm dying to see. I am afraid to say that I haven't really explored the city very much as of yet. I found a part of the city that I really like called the Place Notre Dame, and I've spent most of my time there. I am sort of waiting for it to warm up a bit, before I hit the streets. It is a big city, but small enough that I feel as though I can really get to know the place. It has 3 tram lines, which make the city very navigable.

Grenoble is perhaps most famous for its mountains. It is surrounded on all three sides by mountain chains. By far the most beautiful of the three are these glorious, snow-capped mountains. I don't know the names of all three ranges (I'll learn this soon), but I can say that it is a natural beauty that defies written description. The snow-capped mountains seem like they are out of a storybook. I hate to tantalize you without posting some pictures, so I'll make sure to do that soon. Grenoble hosted the Winter Olympics in 1968, and are currently bidding for 2014. The Maison du Tourisme (tourism office) has a big box in the front where you can fill out a postcard petitioning for the 2014 Olympics. Grenoble is close to some world-famous ski resorts, and has been given the nickname "Capital of the Alps." Although it isn't top on my list of priorities, I hope to have a chance to ski sometime before I return to the US.

Something that really boggled my mind right as I arrived in Grenoble was the amount of people wearing "Franklin and Marshall" apparel. F&M is a small college in Lancaster, PA, not far from Wilmington. I could not figure out for the life of me why everyone was wearing FM sweaters and shirts. I even stumbled across a store that sold FM apparel exclusively. I finally got around to checking it on wikipedia, and I found out that in the 90s, and Italian designer saw an FM sweater and decided to make a line out of it, without even telling the college. It became a sensation in Europe, and apparently its huge in Grenoble. I found my host sisters FM catalogue, and it was fascinating to see the European perception of American university. The catalogue, which is an exhibition of FMs vintage brand based on the attire of the 60s and 70s, plays up the fact that Martin Luther King spoke at FM. Again, I'm amazed to see Europe's memory of MLK.

My schedule has been pretty uneventful so far. Pretty much every day after class, I either go to the optional language lab to work on my grammar if I have early class that day, or go to Place Notre Dame and hang out at a cafe with my friends from the API. I must admit that we aren't quiet at the point yet where we speak French to each other, but I think we will do so with increasing frequency as time goes on. After hanging out at the cafe until about 6 or 7, I come home and have dinner. I have been spending WAY too much time on the computer, and I'm really working on curtailing my time. However, I think it is really important to write down my impressions thus far, so I don't forget years from now.

One really cool thing about Grenoble: When Caryne came my second week here, we went to this museum in the city. The museum traces the history of Grenoble from pre-history until today. The museum was cool, and I plan on going back, but the really neat thing was that underneath it, you can see Grenoble's old roman walls and the remains of a baptistery dating from the 4th to the 10th century. Every Easter, people would come to the baptistery for baptism, which some of my Baptist readers may be interested to know was initially by full immersion (I'm talking to you, Eskridges and Boykins!) Caryne's weekend in Grenoble was really great. I was glad to have her come along to explore the city with me. We also went to this museum about the French Resistance, and the deportation of the Jews during the Vichy regime. The most powerful artifact in the museum for me personally was a yellow star that said "Juif" on it, the kind the Nazis made the Jews wear in Grenoble. I don't think I'd ever seen a yellow star up close; the though of seeing that star on one of my relatives filled me with a sense of apprehension that I'd never experienced before. Reading about General Charles de Gaulle, the Free French Forces, and the efforts by the people of Grenoble to protect the Jews was emotional. The citizens of Grenoble were pivotal in the Nazi resistance, and went to great lengths to protect the Jews in the city. Since coming to France, I've developed a mini-obsession with de Gaulle and the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation. I'm trying to find a Free French Forces Flag while I'm in France to bring home. Viva la France!

I will briefly describe my weekend (this past weekend) in Paris before I conclude my blogging until after I visit Avignon this weekend. I came to Paris on Friday right after classes. We had a brief dinner with Caryne's host mom before heading to the Louvre, which was free and open until 9:45. At the Louvre, we spent our time almost exclusively on Egyptian antiquities. The artifacts were amazing, especially the sarcophagi. They had an actual mummy there as well. I think the coolest thing I saw there was a collection of Egyptian musical instruments, placed around some ancient wall paintings depicting the Egyptians playing these instruments. They also had this amazing display where they put a statue of gods and goddesses next to a brief description of those deities. The next morning, we went to 3 more museums: the Institute du Monde Arab (Institute of the Arab World), the National Archives, and the Carnvalet. The Institute du Monde Arab was having an exhibit on Napoleon's wars in Egypt. The exhibit was smaller than I had anticipated, but it also had some neat artifacts, including a cabinet that the Quran is kept in dating from the Napoleonic conquests. Apparently, the Egyptians sent the French a giraffe as a token of friendship, and they sent it through Marseilles. I just love the picture of some French sailors having to navigate a giraffe through the busy port city. Apparently, the giraffe is still preserved in a museum in La Rochelle, which I might be visiting. I'll let you know if I see the giraffe. Next on the list was the National Archives. This was sort of a confusing place, since everything was written in French, so I couldn't really understand all that much. The place was nearly empty, and very cheap, so I highly recommend it. There were some things that I could understand. For example, I saw an original copy of J'Accuse, the newspaper article where Emilia Zola exposed the plot to frame Alfred Dreyfus. Also among the highlights was a letter written by King Clovis in the 600s, a handwritten speech given by Charles de Gaulle. Again, something that was pretty emotional was a letter written by a French bureaucrat to a Nazi collaborator with the name and address of a French Jew, letting the collaborator know that he could go and take everything in the Jew's house, and enclosed with a diagram of everything in the house. We thought that the Edict of Nantes was housed in the archives, but we couldn't find it. We are going to try to figure out where the Edict is located, since it is tremendously historic. The last museum we went to was Carnvalet, which is the museum about the city of Paris. There were some pretty neat paintings here, including famous ones of Maria Theresa and Francois I. The highlight of the museum was their collection of items from the French Revolution. They had a copy of the certificate that the National Assembly gave to anyone who could prove they had participated in the storming of the Bastille, as well as clocks that displayed the time system created by the Revolutionary government, porcelain with messages like "Liberte ou Mort" (Liberty or Death) written on it, and a collection of this famous series of illustrations from the Revolution that sort of look like clothe patches. Some of the cooler patches were the one depicting four red-capped men carrying a model of the Bastille (which serves as the cover of a book I own about the Revolution), and a picture of some Revolutionaries singing the Marseilles. The Carnvalet also had a neat exhibit, where an artist drew pictures of each metro stop in Paris. It is an interesting juxtaposition between old Paris (Francois) and new Paris (the metro stops).

So far, I've given you a very brief (ha!) overview of my time so far. I feel very relieved to have this all written down, finally. My first couple of weeks have been turbulent, as I've tried to get accustomed to my life here, including a different eating schedule, different friends, and a language that I am far from proficient in. Dinners are still sometimes kind of awkward with my family, and I'm still frustrated with the level of my French. However, now that I have gotten something of a routine down, I should be able to blog with a fair degree of frequency. I'm going to Avignon this weekend with Caryne, and I'll be sure to write all about that. I haven't had any moment in Europe yet where it has really hit me that I am in a totally different continent with an amazing history, and I am sorting of hoping Avignon will be that moment. I'm still searching for this "magical Europe" that I've long envisioned, and if I find it, you'll be the first to know.

Au revoir, for now!