vitalite' intellectuelle

This is my school right now. Like, where I have classes. There are palm trees. Word.

Oh, how I wish I could use accents when I type on this thing. It's rather irritating, and it makes that many of the the things I say in French make little to no sense. Whatevs.

This week has been pretty freaking amazing in terms of my classes. I mean, in terms of everything else as well, but it's been a long time since every single one of my classes makes me actually want to do my homework and want to actually try. Sad, I know, but that's kind of what pre-med did to me (and why I'm no longer bothering with it).

My cours d'expression francaise is always a blast. For some reason, every single person (there are 8 girls in the class) becomes totally crazy and giggly every class and Jean-Michel, our professor, just doesn't understand at all. And then he teaches us something that I leave class and start hearing everywhere I go. I'm like, "how the crap do you do that?" It's as if he knows about all the conversations I've had and am about to have which I guess is pretty creepy but like WOW. For example, we had a vocab test (which I majorly bombed...oops) yesterday, and of the words that I actually did know was "se debrouiller," which means "to cope." Literally I left class and went to my community service, which is hanging out with an old lady for 2 hours (more on that later), and Madame Ros used "se debrouiller" in a sentence. Awesome.

Hold on, going to make some tea and get something to eat--STARVING.

Little note on that: I bought myself some Darjeeling today, and I am stoked. My host mother has a box of Lady Grey, but I've been drinking so much of it and starting to feel bad about it, so I figure it's more polite to just use my own tea. Right now I'm legit drinking Darjeeling and eating leftover cooked vegetables while sitting in the dining room looking into the backyard of "Villa St. Jean" (yes, the house I'm living in has a NAME) and at the cat who's lounging on the table just outside.

ANYWAY. So my French expression class is only one of the 5. My cinema class, architecture class, French cultural patterns, all are so interesting (note: sometimes French cultural patterns is snore-central, but this morning we had a really interesting discussion, so I'm hoping that that's just the start of many more!).

My theatre class is fantastic. Jean-Claude has a very interesting way of teaching acting that is partly things I've seen and done before and partly exercises that are fascinating and incredible for building a group and getting to know each other. One of my favorites from last time was when we had to pair up and one person closes her eyes and the other has to lead her around the room by saying "a droite, a gauche, etc." Sounds easy at first, but Jean-Claude, while we had our eyes closed, started placing chairs and things around the room and having the guides manoeuver around them. Those of us in the first group of the blind didn't know this was going to happen, so the reveal was pretty damn cool. When we reversed it, I had to have Leigh (who was my partner, duh) crawl under a chair that was placed on top of two other chairs...and it totally worked. I finished by having her climb on top of a chair. We were a kind of epic team.

So yeah, that's just a little update on how my classes are going.

Yesterday I had my first one-on-one with the "personne agee" with whom I'll be meeting with and talking to for about two hours per week for the rest of the semester. I met her last week, along with a representative from ACLAP (I know, I giggled a little too), which is a group that connects elderly people with students and also does various other things for them of which I'm not entirely sure. My first meeting with Madame Ros made me a little scared, as I was very worried that we wouldn't be able to understand each other. She speaks fast and has a (I think?) Lyonnais accent, and also she has bad hearing, so she can't always hear what I say nor can she understand my beautiful American accent.

Side note: I keep forgetting to capitalize things. The French just do not capitalize. Only for countrys and peoples. For example, we are "les Americains," from "les Etats-Unis," but I have "un accent americain." Yeah. Whatever.

Also, mmm Activia.

Despite my worries about comprehension, I ended up having a wonderful two hours--and even stayed a little longer to have some gateau! Madame Ros and I told each other our life stories--incredibly different and now we've crossed paths; incredible. Her story is heartbreaking, inspiring and fascinating all at the same time. She was orphaned at age 4 in Lyon, put under the care of the state, started working at 13, never had much formal schooling, returned to Lyon around age 21, met her husband, lived happily with him just until I think around 15 years ago, and has been living alone, with only American students, her adopted family (who actually adopted her to be their grandmother. I can hardly comprehend it, but it brings tears to my eyes nonetheless), and all her neighbors (who all adore her) for company. She's pretty old and sick now and can't leave her appartment, but she's incredibly vivacious quand meme. And then she welcomes me into her home, feeds me cake and shows me pictures of her husband, her friends, the previous American students she's had, and more. When I left last night, I wanted to cry and laugh and dance around in the rain and fly to Moscow all at the same time--just writing this now is getting me kind of choked up.

I really can't believe how much this semester is changing me. I know that inside I'm still the same Tess as I was in Williamstown, but here in Aix, I'm living so much and seeing so much and LEARNING so much that the Teresa who returns to my beloved hometown and my beloved college is pretty much guaranteed to be ready to live as much as I do here--something that this past year has prevented me from doing, I really regret to say. I wasn't myself last year. I know this. I was coming back into myself some this summer, but now I really feel that I'm back. And I'm ready for the world. Bring it.

I've got to run and get dressed for dinner on the town with my girls. :) A bientot!

P.S. Sorry for the random, sudden emotional paragraph, this city has just really gotten to me. In the best way possible.