First Day of School

Today was my first day of French public education. I took the bus with my host mom, found out what class I was in, and then my host mom left and I went to class. In French school you have a main class with a “professeur principale” that you take most of your required classes with that correspond with your area of study. I am in the Scientific track, so I will take all but one of my science classes with the people in my class. Comprende? I kind of just sat down randomly near the back of the class. The teacher (I don’t think she seems very nice) started talking and the girl next to me asked me a question…I said I was American so then she asked some questions and I met her two friends who were sitting right behind us. They are sooo nice... but I’ll get to that in a minute. I went with them to get our books, of which I have 9! On top of having 9 books and a semi-ridiculous schedule compared to my senior year in America…I have to go to school on SATURDAY for P.E. What a joke. But I can tell you tomorrow how real school goes. In class we basically checked out our books and got a lot of paperwork to take home. My new found friends invited me to a Café with them and their friends (“YES!” I said in my head) and there we went.

The girls are extremely nice and welcomed me into their group seemingly without problem. They do talk extremely fast (but stop to explain things) and smoke a lot…but hey what French teenagers don’t? We spent an hour or two at the Café talking (or well I guess they were talking…I was mostly listening) and I had a 33 centiliter coke (like 11.5 oz) for over 3 Euros! Freaking Paris….so expensive. I met the rest of their group of friends (I guess there are 8 in all, 6 girls and 2 guys) when they came because not all of them go to the same school. After we were done at the Café we went to Parc Monceau (a very pretty park near the school) for a long time. There we laid in the grass and I listened some more, although there was a really nice exchange student from Spain there that I spoke to a lot in French (he speaks French very well, but he is only in France for 3 weeks). It was great to have people to hang out with…especially on my first day of school! I am so completely happy and thankful that I already met and befriended such extremely nice people. It makes me so much more excited for this year to come.

Brent