classes

Well, my classes are FINALLY sorted out. After like 2 weeks of adding and dropping and adding again (most of it against my will and forced on me due to evil conflicts), this is what I'm sticking with.

(ALL OF THESE CLASSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH)
- History of Paris
Most boring class EVER. I took this because I thought it would make a nice parallel to History of Tokyo last semester, but unlike Myanna who is young and energetic, our professor for this class is an old man who walks with a cane and is so hard to learn from. He's also taking us on a bazillion trips into Paris almost every Thursday afternoon, which would be nice if they didn't suck up the entire afternoon by going past the allotted time for this class--effectively ruling out any other classes we may have wanted to take after this one. Thanks, crazy old French dude. There are also some really dumb people in here who ask dumb questions and don't know the right words. seeeeriously. But at the same time, those people turn out to be pretty entertaining a lot of the time, on the field trips and stuff. People-wise it's a pretty good class, and I'm happy about that.

- Women in Literature
Oh, it's so boring and weird. My teacher is a woman who, on the plus side, kind of looks like Monica, but is actually kind of strict and mean. We are, yes, reading literature written by women in French, IN FRENCH naturally, and though my class is small, about 7 people, many of those people complain daily about how hard it is. (It is pretty difficult but it's good practice, and even though I don't know every word I can generally just read it and understand what's going on.) Apparently they didn't take seriously the thing where you're supposed to take this class only if you've previously taken a class where you read literature in French. Fortunately, I pretty much have. I don't know about the level of literary analysis she wants us to do... that part is kinda hard in French... but I'll roll with it.

- French: Translation
The class that made it impossible for me to take the Francophone literature class I was in before due to its having 5 Wednesday meetings in addition to our normal Tues-Thu class times (ANOTHER wonderful schedule conflict), but I think it's gonna be worth it. Come on, it's TRANSLATION!! In a classroom!! And it means I don't have to be in the terrible French class I was originally put into, which was seriously going to be a grammar review. That's about the LAST thing I need at this point in my French-learning career. Since I had to move up into this class, I thought everyone there was going to be at a higher level than me, and um... based on what some people have been coming up with for translations... ahem!! Not exaaactly the case. (Though I make numerous mistakes too, translating INTO French is haaard! We have French-to-English meetings with another teacher every other Wednesday, but for the most part it's English-to-French). But for me, it's been very fun, and I hope to continue to learn more about translation theories and methods.

- Art and Architecture
...haha, which of these things is not like the other (since when am I interested in art history?). This is the one added today because I needed a fourth IES class. I was really running out of options here... I was about to do "European Cinema," but then thanks to STUPID HISTORY which goes ALL AFTERNOON on Thursdays, which would have conflicted with the cinema class taking place in the later part of the afternoon Tues-Thu... I couldn't do it. And now I am taking a random art history/architecture class. My dad who is an architect would be proud, but I don't think I'll have the same natural aptitude for it somehow! We'll see how it goes. At least we're going to visit a lot of museums and stuff...

At least I don't have any OUTSIDE CLASSES ON FRIDAYS YAYYYY... even if it would have been a class at the Sorbonne. Oh well, whatever, I'm not giving up 5 hours every Friday to struggle through Sartre in a huuuge class. Now my Fridays are safely entirely free :)

And finally, Japanese at the Institut Japonais, Wednesday nights from 7:15 to 8. Another thing it took forever to hear back from... apparently they called my cell phone and left a message, which I did not receive!!