Day 6

I woke up wishing I had taken the time to shower the night before because I had to be at Paris8 to meet the linguistics professors at 9:45 and it was already 8:30. I had guessed the previous day (and Bri confirmed it) that it would take nearly 45 minutes to get to Paris8 from my apartment, and that’s only if I didn’t have to wait for a train when I crossed lines. I showered and dressed quickly made my strawberry jam and banana sandwich for breakfast. Filled up my water bottle on the way out and made it to the metro station at 9:15 which is what I had been hoping for. Unfortunately that still wasn’t giving myself enough time because it was 9:46 when the metro pulled into Saint Denis Université. I ran up the stairs and was just going through the barriers to the station when I noticed two other girls hurrying too. All three of us made it to the rendez-vous point before the assistant director of our program, Shannon and stood in the shade to catch our breath and wait for the two other linguistics students to arrive. They never did. To avoid all of us being late instead of just two students, Shannon brought us up to meet with the professors and had said she would leave and return to the meting point in case the other showed up but maybe she thought she should stay in case we needed a sort of go between during our talks.

Things started out kind of rough; we all introduced ourselves but then weren’t really sure where to go from there. For a few second we all kind of stared at each other awkwardly but then the two professors launched into an explanation of the courses and the school and the credits an basically everything we had been wanting to know. We have two options: the three linguistics classes that we will probably take are offered at Paris8 and at the Ecole Normale Superioeur which is in the Latin Quarter and closer to my apartment honestly, but the classes move more quickly. They are considered ‘Masters’ level here but it doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in the states. Most of the people taking these classes won’t have taken linguistics before so we’ll all really be on the same page since the three of us have had an intro to all the different areas in our intro course. Also the textbooks will be in English but the classes taught in French so both we and the French students will be handicapped in some way. The other option is to take all of the classes at Paris8, which I might actually have to do to keep from running all over the city every other day. At Paris8, it’s possible to audit as many classes as you want, free of charge (or at least it is for us) so I’ve decided I’m going to take Russian and French slang just for my own personal knowledge but the thing is, only the linguistics classes can be at l’ecole normale so if I have both phonologie and Russian back to back, I might not be able to make it and therefore would have to take all my classes at Paris8. Either way, I’m excited to start school. I’m not exactly bored here; I just wish I were busier so these months would pass more quickly.