Today I had a test, and it went OK. By OK I mean I think I understood the majority of the writing part, and I think I did the conjugations of the three different types of past tense (one of the three I had never heard of before coming here, thanks high school French class), but there was also an oral comprehension part, which is where everything went downhill. We listened to a tape twice, and I barely heard anything both times. We were supposed to write down what we heard, and my chart was almost blank. I made stuff up...it was pretty bad. I hope I did well on the other parts to make up for it. Everyone else was saying how hard they thought the rest of it was, but I thought the rest was easy by comparison.... Good thing my grades here don't affect my UCLA GPA. After that, I had my current events class, which is the only class I actually like. I like my teacher a lot and she seems to really know what she's talking about. She corrects our pronunciation and isn't condescending or anything which is nice. It's interesting to learn about things that are currently happening, too, since a lot is. The strike is still going on, and we talked about why today in more detail than I knew. There's a vote on Wednesday that will determine the direction the strike will go. Hopefully they work things out....
After school, I had to wait an hour for my friends to get out because we were going to go see a movie, so I walked around rue de Rennes and went shopping. I didn't buy anything because the stupid euro is worth 1.4 USD now which sucks. I'm looking for boots, though, since my converse are not going to get me through the winter. I didn't find any that I would be willing to spend so much on, though. Also, I think my legs are disproportionately short compared to the rest of my body, and the taller boots make them look even shorter. Might be just me, but I had a hard time finding a good boot height haha. They finally got out of class, and we went to see The Social Network. First of all, the previews were the weirdest previews I have ever seen. There were a bunch of ads for other countries and then a bunch of weird ads for TV shows I am not inclined to watch after seeing the ads. Then we saw a bunch of previews for foreign movies, including one in Portuguese with French subtitles...there was just too much going on there for me to try and understand haha. I thought the movie was really entertaining. I wasn't bored at any point, and it was interesting to see the back-story.
Yesterday I did absolutely nothing, so I'm not going to talk about it haha. I did book my trip to Bordeaux though, which I'm stoked about.
Today, we got our tests back, and I actually did OK! I did poorly on the oral comprehension, but did really well on the other sections and got a 14.5/20, which apparently is a good grade here. It's impossible to get 20/20 and a 14/20 is good and a 16/20 is great, so I think I'm in good shape! For now, anyway. In my art class, we had a field trip to the Musée Carnavalet, which I definitely have to go back to. I have to be in a certain mood to go walk through a museum, and I generally don't go after 3 hours of French class that started at 9am. We got to class and the teacher just gave us the address and was like "Ok, see you there." I'm so used to filling out 8 permission slips and waivers I was really thrown off by the "get on a bus and I hope everyone makes it" mentality. Everyone did make it, though, and we followed our teacher around as she told us about some of the paintings. I'd like to point out that my art class is not learning about famous works or different genres of painting, really. It's about what color the paintings are and how the artist filled the space. So we walked around as the teacher said "See, this is blue, and this is red, and these colors contrast." I was dying. It was in French so I guess there was a little bit of a challenge, but I kept zoning out. I can look at a painting and tell you what color it is. She also didn't say who any of them were by or the titles or anything, so I'm not sure if we're supposed to know them for a test. I ended up walking around a little bit on my own, and then left early.
This morning, I woke up planning on going running, and then I checked the weather. It was a toasty 32 degrees. So I decided to stay in the warm house until a little bit later and then walk to where I was meeting my friend instead of take the Métro. A little group of us went to the Centre Pompidou today. The building itself is soooo cool. It's very industrial looking, and the stairs are on the outside so you can see people going up and down. Also, all the different pipes are different colors based on what's in them. Like the blue pipes are for air, green is for water, and then red is for the elevators and escalators. It's awesome. It's another national museum, so it was free for us, which was a nice surprise because it didn't say anything on the website about free entry for students. The first floor we went to was kind of weird. 
There were a lot of cool pieces of art, and then a lot of disturbing things, too, so I wasn't a huge fan of that floor. Some of the sculptures were cool, but there was a lot of nudity and weird violence in a lot of the art, too, so I was kind of uncomfortable. Two of the girls left after that floor. I think they definitely missed the best part, though, because as strange and not great as the first floor was was how amazing the second floor was. It was full of Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Pollock, Miro, and my favorite, Kandinsky. I had no idea all that was there so it was the best surprise ever! Also, the view was amazing. You could see the entire city. Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower on one side, and Sacre Coeur on the other. It was funny the girl I was with called it a Basilisk and I was like "basilica?" It was hilarious. 
I saw one of my favorite paintings ever by Kandinsky. I always forget about him when people ask my favorite artist, but now after seeing his work in person I don't think I'll ever forget. I could have sat in front of "Rouge-Jaune-Bleu" (Red-Yellow-Blue) forever. It's so beautiful. I also didn't realize how much I liked Braque. He's kind of Picasso-esque but I think more refined. I also saw the urinal that Marcel Duchamp wrote "R. Mutt" on and called it art. Awesome. All in all, the visit was definitely worth it. After walking most of the way there 
and then around the museum, I was soo hungry so we decided to head home. Plus I have a test tomorrow I hadn't started studying for. We went down to the Métro a different way than we had come up, and it was literally a labyrinth it was kind of ridiculous. We spent about 10 minutes trying to navigate our way down there it was absurd. I finally got home and ran to the store to get breakfast food (since I ran out of my .65euro corn flakes) and to get a quick snack. There aren't as many salty snacks here as in the States and I really miss it haha. In the chip aisle I found hamburger flavored chips. I didn't get them, but I'm definitely intrigued haha. I got home and started studying, but I don't really know what he's going to ask about the movies we watched, because he tended to ramble a lot about the directors and similar American films and who was married to the directors and actors, etc. Should be interesting. I did talk to Bibiane tonight more than usual in French, and I think I'm doing better. I followed the news pretty well the other night, which was cool. One more week of school and then vacation!!
Also, I finally saw the cotton candy pink Fiat when I had my camera! Score.
Yesterday I did absolutely nothing, so I'm not going to talk about it haha. I did book my trip to Bordeaux though, which I'm stoked about.
Today, we got our tests back, and I actually did OK! I did poorly on the oral comprehension, but did really well on the other sections and got a 14.5/20, which apparently is a good grade here. It's impossible to get 20/20 and a 14/20 is good and a 16/20 is great, so I think I'm in good shape! For now, anyway. In my art class, we had a field trip to the Musée Carnavalet, which I definitely have to go back to. I have to be in a certain mood to go walk through a museum, and I generally don't go after 3 hours of French class that started at 9am. We got to class and the teacher just gave us the address and was like "Ok, see you there." I'm so used to filling out 8 permission slips and waivers I was really thrown off by the "get on a bus and I hope everyone makes it" mentality. Everyone did make it, though, and we followed our teacher around as she told us about some of the paintings. I'd like to point out that my art class is not learning about famous works or different genres of painting, really. It's about what color the paintings are and how the artist filled the space. So we walked around as the teacher said "See, this is blue, and this is red, and these colors contrast." I was dying. It was in French so I guess there was a little bit of a challenge, but I kept zoning out. I can look at a painting and tell you what color it is. She also didn't say who any of them were by or the titles or anything, so I'm not sure if we're supposed to know them for a test. I ended up walking around a little bit on my own, and then left early.
This morning, I woke up planning on going running, and then I checked the weather. It was a toasty 32 degrees. So I decided to stay in the warm house until a little bit later and then walk to where I was meeting my friend instead of take the Métro. A little group of us went to the Centre Pompidou today. The building itself is soooo cool. It's very industrial looking, and the stairs are on the outside so you can see people going up and down. Also, all the different pipes are different colors based on what's in them. Like the blue pipes are for air, green is for water, and then red is for the elevators and escalators. It's awesome. It's another national museum, so it was free for us, which was a nice surprise because it didn't say anything on the website about free entry for students. The first floor we went to was kind of weird. 
There were a lot of cool pieces of art, and then a lot of disturbing things, too, so I wasn't a huge fan of that floor. Some of the sculptures were cool, but there was a lot of nudity and weird violence in a lot of the art, too, so I was kind of uncomfortable. Two of the girls left after that floor. I think they definitely missed the best part, though, because as strange and not great as the first floor was was how amazing the second floor was. It was full of Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Pollock, Miro, and my favorite, Kandinsky. I had no idea all that was there so it was the best surprise ever! Also, the view was amazing. You could see the entire city. Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower on one side, and Sacre Coeur on the other. It was funny the girl I was with called it a Basilisk and I was like "basilica?" It was hilarious. 
I saw one of my favorite paintings ever by Kandinsky. I always forget about him when people ask my favorite artist, but now after seeing his work in person I don't think I'll ever forget. I could have sat in front of "Rouge-Jaune-Bleu" (Red-Yellow-Blue) forever. It's so beautiful. I also didn't realize how much I liked Braque. He's kind of Picasso-esque but I think more refined. I also saw the urinal that Marcel Duchamp wrote "R. Mutt" on and called it art. Awesome. All in all, the visit was definitely worth it. After walking most of the way there 
and then around the museum, I was soo hungry so we decided to head home. Plus I have a test tomorrow I hadn't started studying for. We went down to the Métro a different way than we had come up, and it was literally a labyrinth it was kind of ridiculous. We spent about 10 minutes trying to navigate our way down there it was absurd. I finally got home and ran to the store to get breakfast food (since I ran out of my .65euro corn flakes) and to get a quick snack. There aren't as many salty snacks here as in the States and I really miss it haha. In the chip aisle I found hamburger flavored chips. I didn't get them, but I'm definitely intrigued haha. I got home and started studying, but I don't really know what he's going to ask about the movies we watched, because he tended to ramble a lot about the directors and similar American films and who was married to the directors and actors, etc. Should be interesting. I did talk to Bibiane tonight more than usual in French, and I think I'm doing better. I followed the news pretty well the other night, which was cool. One more week of school and then vacation!!Also, I finally saw the cotton candy pink Fiat when I had my camera! Score.
Love the "get on the bus and I'll see you there" mentality - we should try with younger students (second grade?) - you know, survival of the fittest...
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