Le Stage Intensif

Bonjour! Today begin the stage intensif here in France for me.  This is a class that lasts for 4 weeks that is a language immersion course.  My roommates and I woke up this morning, groggy as ever.  The sun seems to take longer to rise here; I don't know why.  We took the bus to school with a bunch of our hall mates and proceeded to UTC to try and find our building.  After much confusion between three languages (French, English, and Portuguese), we finally found our classroom.  There, the French professors took roll of every exchange student.  Let's just say that I'm a minority.  The bulk of students here are Brazilian and Chilean.  Other countries that are represented are: Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, S. Korea, Slovakia, and the good ol' USA! There is one other American here with me, Liam, who is from Illinois.

After hearing all of the places that are being represented, we were given bags with folders inside that had a ton of information about Compiègne; bus schedules and good places to go eat and shop.  We also received a packet of the schedule for the next few weeks of the course and I am super excited.  We are going to the Château Pierrefonds, Paris (on a boat cruise!), and around Compiègne! We were then broken up into ability level with a short oral interview and review of our online test scores.  I was bumped up to the highest level, luckily, and I am with my roommate Luiza.  I really like our class.  There are 9 people in it.  Three people are from Brazil, two from the USA:), three from Chile, and one from Mexico.  A really nice group of people and the instructor is one like I would find in Rhody, but she definitely speaks faster.

After class, I felt like I was in 6th grade again, walking home from school and feeling like I could do anything I wanted.  A few of us walked together and stopped in the cell phone shop to ask some questions, although I am well-equipped with a phone thanks to Cait.  We then went to the cutest little bookstore to get our workbook for the course.  After that, two of the girls and I decided to be spontaneous and take the bus to the centre commercial, which is the area with big department stores and such.  I went to the French version of Best Buy; definitely not as good, but it held its own.  We then went to Carre Four, which is like a Target, Walmart, Stop & Shop, and Best Buy put together.  Very easy to get lost there, but it is a super fun place to browse around and read all of the labels.  What can I say? I'm a nerd.

Anyway, I'm going to take it easy tonight.  I did a lot of walking and rushing around today!  Talk soon!
-Amanda