The week of September 6th

Monday, September 6^th, we had our DEFLE (department of international students learning French) placement exams. (The DEFLE is where I am taking most of my classes).  There were a bunch of students all in this giant amphitheater.  The people of an Asian origin clearly outweighed the 65 Californians. The test included listening and writing and a one-on-one oral component.  It wasn’t as bad as expected and I tested into the second degree (which means nothing to any of you).

This day became known as “messy Monday”.  Almost all of the Californians (except some of my friends and I) decided to start drinking after the DEFLE test, which ended at like 12:30pm.  We still had class that afternoon, so people had come to class buzzed/ drunk.  By nighttime, I got back to the dorms from dinner and everyone was WASTED!!!! It was hilarious to hear about some of stories later.  Obviously, some of them never made it to class the next day because they were throwing up/ too hung-over.

Most of this week consisted of classes in the morning and some meetings here and there.

Thursday was an end-of-ILP dinner (which means it was the end of our intensive language program dinner).  We were finally going to get to try real French food that none of us would ever get on our own… like duck.  That was another glorious drunken night for the Californians (minus my friends and I… we somehow keep not getting the memo).  During the dinner, one of the program coordinators told us that the French believe that one should drink, but in moderation...which means that she could tell that the Californians were already drunk.  The next day I heard tons of crazy stories about the drunken people.  After the dinner, we went to the reflecting pool where there were tons of Erasmus students.  Erasmus is like studying abroad for European students.  So we got to meet some new people. YAY.

Friday, I moved into my permanent residence.  I rent a room in this ladies house.  So I live with a mom and her three teenage sons (14, 16, and 17). My bed is a futon so it is incredibly uncomfortable, but at least I have my own shower and big French windows.

That night, my landlord Cecile invited me out for drinks with her and the girl who used to rent my room, Gale.   At the bar, I asked the bartender for a coke and all the French people just laughed at me and called me and talked about how American I was.  Then the bartender proceeded to give me white wine mixed with the French equivalent of sprite. When I finished that, he gave me a coke with lemon, which was nice… Then he got inspired and tried different mixtures of drinks. I tried coke mixed with red wine which sounds gross but wasn’t bad.  Interesting night out with my 45 year old landlord and Gale who is 27.