Monday, October 3rd was my first day of school. Well, sort of...
French universities start late. The earliest I heard of anyone starting this year was the last week in September (at Paris-IV Sorbonne); everyone else started the week of October 3rd. Including INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (also referred to fondly as "Langues' O"), where I am taking most of my classes.
So, swallowing my nerves, I boarded a Paris city bus and somehow found my way to the INALCO building in the 13 arrondissement (not far from where I stayed when I first arrived in Paris in August). It's a very new building - in fact, they just moved in for this semester, and things are still a bit chaotic as a result. C'est le bordel, as they would say in French. Students standing in long lines, waiting to sign up for classes (yes, they still do this ON PAPER here in France), a broken elevator - and my class was on the 5th floor (that's 6th floor if you count the American way!).
No matter, I somehow found the classroom, and my fellow classmates for beginning Malagasy written language : a middle-aged couple who are leaving in January to do humanitarian work in Madagascar, and an elderly woman who wants to do ethnography in Madagascar. So much for the intimidating Parisian university-age students I had been imagining!
Voilà la salle de classe,
clearly indicating the start of Malagasy language on Monday, October 3rd!
So the four of us chatted while we waited for our professor to arrive...and waited...and waited...
An hour went by.
One half of the middle-aged couple went downstairs to see if any of the secretaries had word on the location of our professor. In typical French university secretary fashion, none of them did.
So we waited some more.
It was supposed to be a three-hour class.
We waited three hours for a professor who never showed up.
Then we were supposed to have a half-hour break before our next class (Malagasy oral language practice), which was also supposed to be three hours long.
Now, quite frustrated myself, I went downstairs to see what news I could find. I found a table marked "Information." That seemed promising. I waited patiently in line to ask a lady at the table. She told me that since she had seen the head of the Malagasy department that morning, she assumed that classes were supposed to start today...
Thanks. Real helpful.
So while the elderly woman gave up, the middle-aged couple and I decided to wait one half-hour into our second three-hour class to see if a professor showed up, before calling it quits.
No professor.
Disappointed to have worked myself up for nothing and wasted an entire afternoon (the building doesn't have wi-fi!), but happy to get to go home early, I rode the metro home and bought myself a jar of organic fair-trade imitation Nutella to console myself.
It was only a few days later (after one of the lovely academic support people at CUPA went to INALCO in person the next day on my behalf, made several phone calls, and sent several e-mails) that the mystery of the missing prof was solved. Turns out, all the professors in the African studies departments just decided not to start class with everyone else and to wait a week. Go figure.
Welcome to the French university system, petite américaine!
So this meant an extra week of "vacation" for me, which gave me plenty of time to work on fellowship apps, thesis, and continue my "Couch to 5K" running program. And it gave me the perfect excuse to spend the weekend in Normandy - my first time back since I interned their through Princeton in France in 2009!
Although my internship in Normandy was only two years ago, it feels like much more time has passed since then. That summer feels like a part of my childhood, when I was a person very different from who I am today. But I felt my heart beat fast and I couldn't suppress a smile on my face as I watched Paris melt into emerald green hills dotted with spotted Norman cows...and by the time the train stopped in Lisieux, and I looked up at the Basilique de Ste. Thérèse, I was positively beaming.
This is where my spoken French became what it is today, this is where I lived on my own for the very first time, this is where I first got a chance to learn about myself away from everything and everyone that was familiar.
The weather gray and blustery, the food rich and hearty, the people warm and friendly...Paris, je t'aime, but Basse Normandie will always be my first French love!
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