Saying Good-bye to France

Classes officially ended today, and I can't believe the end of our stay here in Versailles has come. I've gotten so used to all my classes here, seeing everyone in our group every day, as well as our professors. Walking away from the professors was the hardest to do because we won't see them again, and even though I initally had my differences with some of them, they all eventually grew on me, and I'll really miss them a lot. I'll also miss how easy our classes were here--we are really going to dislike being back at Furman in terms of work, but I'll be excited to see everyone again. It's been so long.

Our last week here, we've just been wrapping up with our classes and trying to see everything in Paris that we hadn't found time to visit yet. On Wednesday, I went to the Places de Vosges with Elizabeth and Monika and saw Victor Hugo's house, and then we walked to Hotel de Ville and saw a beautifully decorated Christmas market there. Thankfully, it was a pretty nice day despite it being cold.

Disappointingly, the traditional Thanksgiving lunch we heard we would have here never happened. Dr. Patton did nothing in terms of preparing for it, so to make up for it, he bought us drinks. While we all took advantage of this, it certainly didn't make up for the lack of Thanksgiving joy I usually feel on this particular day. In fact, I kept forgetting it was Thanksgiving because it was just another Thursday for the French, and the fact that no Thanksgiving lunch was planned really disappointed me. While I had fun hanging out with the other people in our group at this bar (and even got to meet another French friend of Michael's whose name was Kome), it just wasn't the same at all and I was very aware of what I was missing. But it's OK, I know Christmas will make up for it.

After taking our final test today with Monsieur Sinniger, Michael, Michele, and I ran into Madame Sinniger and Michael asked her if we could sit in on an English class at St. Jean (the French high school). Madame Sinniger said we could, so we showed up to an afternoon English class. But instead of just sitting and observing, we ended up being the focus of the class. The teacher made us sit in chairs in front of the room and told us to introduce ourselves (in English of course) and then just told the students to ask us questions. It was pretty awkward because since our visit to this class had been decided only 3 hours ago, the kids had had no time to prepare questions for us, so they didn't really know what to ask. Plus we were sitting in a room full of 15 year olds who were more anxious to get out of their Friday class than sit there and think up questions to ask us. So we just ended up asking them a lot of questions, like if they had been to the U.S. and where they had been. We also asked what their stereotypes of Americans were, and basically I've found that in general, all French think this about Americans: We are all fat, the hamburger is an essential part of our diet, we drink Coke all the time (like it's water), and we eat in front of the TV. Basically, all they think we do is eat. So it was funny to hear these stereotypes and just tell them that that's not always the case in America (unfortunately, it can be). Thankfully, the class only lasted an hour so we managed to fill up the time talking about different things like our experiences here in France, the election, and then one guy asked us if we thought the French dressed well (I think they do for the most part). After the class, I hung out with Michael and Katie at his house, playing with his little dog named Cashew, and then I went home and had dinner with my parents.

Tomorrow night, I leave for Barcelona and will not be taking my computer with me because it's heavy and it could possibly be stolen in a hostel. Any internet access I'll be able to get will definitely be limited, so this will probably be my last post while I'm here. Thanks to everyone who followed my blog and I'll be seeing you soon! Three weeks!