Classes and Frustrations

So yesterday, like I said, we had our meeting for registration. The meeting was at 11, but Fréderic (who works with Caroline, and was supposed to talk to us on the first day, but he was ill) had sent an email saying that they had found the little books of offered courses that we needed to look at to choose what we were going to take. So we went to that office to look at the little books again, which wasn't really all that helpful. I think I'm the only one who found one of the classes I wanted, and only after Caroline showed me. Then we had to find the office where we were having the meeting, with another woman named Carine Berberi. We ended up in the wrong place, but fortunately the people in that office called her and we got set up in her office. She tried to go through and figure out what each person was taking, but there were a lot of problems.

First off, there are apparently two institutions where we can take classes. There's the actual Université de François Rabelais, which is where we'd take regular college classes on any subject, but taught in French with actual French students. And then there's also the CUEFEE, which stands for the Centre Universitaire d'Enseignement du Français aux Etudiants Etrangers (the University Center for the Teaching of French to Foreign Students) and that is where we would take classes in learning French itself, depending on our level. They pronounce it Kwehf, and it's apparently what Dr. Rawson told us was the Franco-American Institute. We can take classes at either, but there are certain qualifiers involved in studying at the CUEFEE, like the 40 Euro fee that no-one told us about. Also the CUEFEE doesn't start until after we take the placement test next week, so we can't even think about what classes we'd theoretically take.

Carine works for the Université, so she was only giving us information about those specific classes. But, at this point those aren't even all figured out. Valeria and Mamie were told they could take specific art classes, but we found out that those are apparently not usually offered to exchange students and no-one has yet figured out where, when, or if that's going to be possible. Grant got a bunch of classes, but doesn't really know if he's going to take them, and Joel is apparently taking some of the same classes, but I have no idea. Aaron and Sierra seem fine, which is lucky for them. They had emailed their department people and apparently done this already. I managed to get three classes at the Université: beginning Greek, beginning Italian, and a French-English translation course. Hopefully I'll also take two classes at the CUEFEE (if you take any classes there at all, they require two obligatory ones, so that's the plan). I have absolutely no idea whether I'll be able to transfer all five of those home, due to credit hour issues, but we'll see.

After we talked to Carine, everyone was ridiculously frustrated, to the point where we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had to go back to talk to Frédéric about the CUEFEE stuff (like when the test was, and where the test was, and when the classes start) because apparently he's in charge of that. Who knew? But they were on lunch break or something, because we couldn't get in the office. So we decided to go and get our own lunch, and calm down a bit.

The other girls had found a nice little restaurant where you could get a big sandwich, a plateful of fries, and a drink for 4.5 Euro. We went there, and they ended up having to seat us in the back, which was a kind of little gaming room. It was a lot nicer after the people playing pool and fuzzball left; before that I was getting really annoyed at the girl who kept hitting the back of my chair. The food was really good, though, and it was worth the bit of a walk. Rejuvenated and calmed, we went to talk to Frédéric and got the information we needed. (Unfortunately, the test is at the same time as my first Italian class, which is something I'm going to have to figure out.)

Then we went back to the house and hung out for the evening. Dinner was sort of strange; cucumbers in a slightly acidic creamy sauce and what was apparently shepherd's pie. It seemed more like a cream sauce with bits of ham and what might have been potatoes, I wasn't really sure. After dinner, we had decided we needed to get out of the house and have fun, or the stupid Université would drive us crazy. So we all got ready and went to a bar in the Place Plumereau. It was one of the same places we'd gone the other night, since we'd really liked it. While we were there, we met some cute French guys named Roman, Alban, and Thomas. We wanted to go dancing with them, since they knew where there were some discothèques in the area. The boys decided to stay, instead, so the four of us girls went.

Unfortunately the club was really ridiculously crowded, and kind of expensive. It was 10 Euro just to get in, and wall-to-wall packed. They played a lot of techno, which I didn't really mind, but it could've been more fun. Thomas didn't dance at all, and Sierra and Mamie ended up dancing with the other two. Valeria and I quickly got tired of dancing by ourselves and weren't really enjoying the club, so we walked home. We stayed up just to make sure that everyone got home alright, and then went to bed.

This morning, we slept in really late. A couple hours ago Valeria and Mamie and I got up and went to Rue Bordeaux for paninis and something to drink. We've been trying to get in touch with Dr. Rawson about our problems with classes and stuff, so hopefully that'll happen today.