Classes started this week and they are SO different from American classes, especially classes at Wofford. The professors come in and lecture and leave. They assign usually a text book and about three other books to read, but that’s all they say about them. So we have no clue what material will be on the midterm and final. The syllabi are also just a list of topics we’re going to cover in the class. All of this is so different from classes at Wofford where the syllabi list out what we will cover daily in class along with the corresponding chapters in the books. It also gives you the dates of the midterms and finals at the beginning of the semester. I think this semester in France will be a lot less stressful day to day, but the weeks of midterms and finals will be pretty stressful, as always. My favorite class so far is France and the U.S. in the Middle East since 1945. It’s a history class but I love it because it’s such new material to me. I’ve always learned about U.S. or Western European history, so it’s really interesting to learn about the Middle East—especially with everything going on in the world today.

            Every Tuesday our program hosts a “Conversation Club” for IES students and French students to come talk for 45 minutes in French and 45 minutes in English. It was so much fun and we met some really nice French people. My group met this really funny guy and girl and they told us about some places to go on the weekends and stuff. They came with our group to a fancy French crêperie Thursday night and promised to come back to “Conversation Club” next week. The crêperie was absolutely amazing! We had a dinner crepe and a dessert crêpe. We thought the dinner ones were delicious, but then the dessert ones came. I got a chocolate one and it was truly the most amazing thing I have eaten. I don’t even know how to describe but it was spectacular. I also tried my friend’s caramel one—incredible too. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

            So of course France is very different from the United States, especially South Carolina. But here are some of the weirder differences we have noticed and didn’t expect:

They don’t have top sheets. They use a bottom fitted sheet and a comforter and that’s it. When they change the sheets they change the comforter too.

There are no box springs. They have a mattress that sits on a wooden board on the bed frame.

The paper is grid paper—they don’t have any paper with straight lines, it’s ALL grid paper. And it’s longer than the paper in the U.S. It’s 21x29.7cm so it’s about an inch longer.

They eat REALLY fast and use their knife to like fold their food onto the fork. When they get to the dinner table they put their hands on the table instead of in their laps. And they always have bread but just put it on the table beside their glass—like they don’t have bread plates and they don’t put their bread on their plate, they just leave it on the table.  

The women always wear the exact same outfit for two or three days in a row.

Boys do not hold the doors for girls or even let them go in first. And NOBODY smiles when you pass them on the street—even young children.

And then there are of course the differences we expected like no ice (we went to a French fast food restaurant the other day and they literally put ONE cube of ice in our diet cokes,) the French never drink water and when they do the glass is so small it’s like a sip, they don’t worry about personal space like Americans do so they don’t mind at all standing right beside you while waiting on the tram even though there is plenty of other room, and they eat a TON of bread (at every single meal—breakfast, lunch and dinner) but are all still skinny.  

            We’re so excited it’s the weekend and this week flew by with classes. Hopefully we’ll have some fun stories from this weekend J