Classes!

Bonjour!

My Schedule is:

Lundi
8h: Mathmatiques
9h: Anglais
10h: Français
11h: Lunch/Break (for 3 hours)
14h: Physique-Chimie
15h: Fin.

Mardi
8h: SVT (Biology) 
10h: Physique-Chimie 
12h: Lunch/Break (for 3 hours)
15h: Anglais
16h: Fin.

Mercredi
8h: Mathmatiques
10h: Français
12h: Fin.

Jeudi
8h: Histoire & Géographie
10h: Anglais (every other week)
11h: Civiques (every other week)
12h: Lunch/Break
14h: SVT (Biology)
15h: Français
16h: Espagnol
17h: Fin.

Vendredi
9h: Histoire & Geographie
10h: Mathematiques
11h: Espagnol
12h: Lunch/Break (for 1 hour)
13h: Sport
15h: Fin.

At this point I have had at least one session of each of my classes, so I will give a brief description of each I guess.

Physique-Chimie
I first lesson in this class was a physics lesson on what I believe was light diffraction. It was on the first day and I could not comprehend practically all that the teacher said. So at this point, I am very lost in the class. I hope that I begin to understand more as the year progresses.

Mathematiques
This is the only class I completely understand, besides English. The first lesson was covering parabolas, which I studied last year, so at this point, I can follow it pretty well. I even did the homework for this class, and that's saying something.

Français
I am so utterly lost in this class. I cannot understand the texts we have been given and I just don't see this class getting any easier. It might, but at this point I am dubious of that. Français here is the equivalent of English class back home. It's more of a literature course.

Histoire & Géographie
I follow what happens in this class fairly well. By that I mean I at least now what we're studying at this point: the industrial revolution. It is still very likely that I am wrong about that, but for now I will pretend that I know what I'm doing.

Anglais
Obviously, I understand this class. The first day for the last half of the hour long class, the teacher told the class to ask me questions in English. In the first half she did her introduction, introduced me, and then gushed about how lucky they were to have a native English speaker with them. They were all a bit shy at first to be asking the questions, but they started eventually. It was the same 5 or 6 people, as well as the teacher. And there was probably a total of 10 minutes of awkward silence while they processed English. I hope they now have a better understanding of the struggles I face with speaking French nearly 24/7. And I must include the best part of this class. I said that I'm from Seattle and it is cold there. The teacher then asked the class, "And why is Seattle cold?" Their response: "Because it's near Canada." Made my day.

Civiques
This class is every other week and it appears to consist purely of discussion and response to questions. It may change later on but it seems like a sort of Socratic Seminar of a class. I sort of follow what's happening in this class, but not on a consistent basis. At all.

SVT (Biology)
Now my first experience in this class was interesting. First off, the teacher spoke like lightning. LIGHTNING. She seemed to be pretty funny, because the other students laughed a lot. I mean I would have, but I didn't even catch one word of what she said. I was able to answer most of the questions she posed, but it was making the answers sound French that was difficult. For example, she showed a picture of a karyotype and asked what it was. I knew it was a karyotype, but I had no idea how to pronounce it. I'll catch on eventually.... I hope.

Espagnol
I do not enjoy this class. It is year four Spanish. I have not even taken a minute of Spanish. The teacher just lets me sit there and do nothing for the hour. It's not the highlight of my day, but I tend to just tune out. I can barely handle all French, so I sure don't need Spanish piled with it.

Sport
I think sport is going to be alright. I talked with more people in those two hours than I did the days before that. I'm not sure if the teacher knows that I'm American, and I don't care at this point. I'd rather he treat me the same. Just to feel like I'm not so obviously foreign (even though I know, deep down, that it's really obvious and I cannot avoid that).

Generally, my comprehension of what's going on is alright in classes such as Mathematiques, SVT, and Histoire. COGNATES LITERALLY SAVE MY SANITY AND FALSE COGNATES TAKE IT AWAY. Cognates are words that are the same or similar in a language. English/French cognates include: motivation, equation, karyotype, mitosis, etc. Some false cognates are: attendre (not to attend, but to wait) and assister (not to assist, but to attend).

One of the things that gets me is the handwriting and abbreviations. I am very dependent on what they write on the boards, so when my history teacher threw in his abbreviations, I was so confused. And their handwriting is a mix between print and cursive. It drives me crazy. Mostly because my handwriting is starting to turn into a weird mixture of cursive and print. I don't like it, but it's happening.

Also, I don't understand the whole kisses system yet. It varied from pairing to pairing. Some did the casual three face touches with sound effects. Others did two where one person kisses the cheek for real and vice versa. Some did just one. It confuses me. I like hugs. No one really hugs here. I tried to explain to one of my new friends that we hug and she just seemed really confused by the concept.

Oh boy this post is getting far too long! Au revoir!

Amelia