School, School, School!

Hi everyone! Our classes are finally over for the week! We are on campus right now using the internet and just met with an advisor to add and drop our classes and finalize our schedule. As we were walking into her office she goes “Hi, Carps!” It’s weird how everyone somehow knows our name! She was really nice and fixed our schedule without any problems. We are taking four classes: Introduction to Film, Introduction to Sociology, French Artists on the French Riviera, and English Composition and Rhetoric II. We originally only had classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday but because we just had to add the film class we now have class on Thursdays as well. We think Film will be our most interesting class. Some French kid came running in late with a huge bag of popcorn and when the teacher asked what the smell was he said “Popcorn, it’s a movie class so you have to have popcorn!” We normally aren’t allowed to have any food or drink in class except for water. The school has little vending machines that sell a cup of coffee or hot chocolate that is delicious for .40euro so on really cold days or when we are really hungry we buy one during break!

After we are done here at school we are going to go back to Carreforre (the place we went last Saturday that is similar to Cosco). It is amazing how much money we can spend on food and still have no food to cook at night! We have been living off of peanut butter and jelly since we got here that we packed from home but the last two nights we finally decided to cook dinner after going to the grocery store. It wasn’t too successful! The first night we made pasta and chicken nuggets but the nuggets turned out to be rubber and we couldn’t cut them! Last night we made ham and cheese sandwiches and pizza bagels but the bagels had a mayonnaise like filling that made us instantly sick. Gross!

Em is amazed at all of the weird differences we see here. During one of our movies in film class last night that was in French she started making a list so here it is:
Scarves – EVERYWHERE! Everyone wears them no matter what the temperature is, especially guys.
Rulers – every single French student carries a ruler with them and has it out on their desk every second of class. We have never seen one being used.
Paper – all of the paper here is about two inches longer than our paper at home. We brought folders with us from home so all of our papers stick out of the top and are getting ruined. All of the paper here is also graph paper; they do not sell lined paper so all of the American’s who didn’t bring paper with them are having a very hard time writing!
Cars – all of the cars here are top brands. Even all of the buses are Mercedes.
Toilet paper – the toilet paper here is pink! So far we have gone through thirteen rolls since we have been here! They must be small rolls!
Kisses – everyone kisses! We were so excited the first time one of the French kids kissed us on both of our cheeks! It is still weird seeing two guys kiss each other to say hello though!

I’m sure Em will continue to add on to her list so we will be sure to keep you updated! We love and miss you soooo much! Hope everything is going well at home! Have a great day!

-Em and Jen

** The first two pictures are of the two dinners we cooked. They look a lot better than they tasted! Haha! I guess we can only improve on our cooking! The second picture is of Em at the bus station. We still have no idea how to read the maps and have already ended up at the bus station with only the driver three times now! I guess that can only improve too!! The fourth picture Em took on our way to the bus station of some mopeds lined up and the fifth picture is one we took at the beach. Enjoy!