First Day of School

Monday morning came way too early since I am one of the fortunate people who have an 8 AM class on Mondays. I sat my alarm for 6 so I would have plenty of time to get ready and get there early to find the classroom and such. I even sat my alarm on the other side of the room so I would be forced to get out of bed. So the alarm went off, I got up and hit snooze...and went back to bed. Although, I guess when I hit the snooze I bumped the alarm set button and turned it off because the snooze alarm did not go off 5 mins later. Fortunately I woke up again, because with as tired as I was I could have easily slept for another 3 hours. But instead I woke up at 6:50. I had been planning to leave at 7:15, so I was a little annoyed that I had less than half an hour to get ready. I decided to wear my grey sweater dress over black tights and my black flats. I didn’t really know how the French students would dress but I figured it was a pretty safe outfit. Technically I only have to leave a half hour early to make it to class on time, but since I didn’t know where I was going, and I had to buy my monthly metro pass, I was really hoping to get gone before then. No such luck. I made it out the door just before 7:30.

Because I hadn’t purchased my Carte d’Orange for October I had to do that before I could take the metro to school. The station I normally walk to which is on the line that goes direct to the school doesn’t have a ticket window, only an automated machine, and most of those take coins and bank cards. So since I was paying with cash I had to go to a stop that has a ticket window. It’s actually closer to my apartment, but it meant I had to change lines which takes longer. So anyway, I head out towards the metro in the predawn light with the city just starting to wake up.

Just outside the metro entrance there were the guys who are always there in the morning passing out copies of the little free daily papers. I go to grab my copy of “Le Matin Plus” as I am heading down the stairs, but the guy doesn’t let go of it and says “Wait a sec, Madame!” I figured he wanted to give me some spiel about signing up for something or other and I really didn’t have time for that so I just let go of the paper and started down the stairs. “No wait! Take it,” he said, and handed me the paper. I took the paper and tucked it under my arm and continued down the stairs. The guy followed. He ran down the stairs after me, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me!” He was trying to get my attention because I had my headphones in, and I didn’t know what was going on so I wearily took them out and looked at him. He leaned in and smiled. “Vous etes super belle, madame, et...” I don’t know how he expected me to respond to someone leaving their post to chase me down the stairs and tell me that I’m “super beautiful” or what he was about to add, but I just told him I was in a hurry and ran the rest of the way down the steps and into the station. I had to laugh. Only in France will a guy chase a random girl into the metro at 7 in the morning to hit on her. Well, maybe in Italy too. He went back up to hand out the free papers, and I got in line to buy my metro pass, and made it to school just on time.

I didn’t know where the room was because Sciences Po’s main “campus” is made up of several buildings linked together and it’s kind of like a maze. Fortunately, they had the foresight to have the guys who are normally at the front desk all standing around in the entry way to tell people where different rooms are. I was standing there looking confused and one of them asked nicely if he could help me find something. I told him the room number and he gave me directions on how to get there. I ran up the stairs and made it to class on time. It was the class I was most looking forward to: the role of NGOs in International Relations. It’s an elective class in French, which means it’s limited to 25 students, and it’s more interactive than a lecture. The professor is François Rubio who is the Legal Director for Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) which is an NGO that split off of Médecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders). I think that’s cool because he has real life experience in what he’s teaching.

I was glad to see a girl from Spain who was in my methodology class come in, because as least I had one friendly face. I was surprised when he went around and had us all introduce ourselves and tell what year, what we’re specializing in, and why we decided to take the class. The directors had told us during registration that half the seats in every class were reserved for international students to have first choice, and then the rest were held for French students, so I was expecting to be in a class of mostly French kids. During the introductions however, person after person said “HI, I’m so-and-so, and I’m here on the international program.” Out of the class I think only about 6 of them were French. It was cool for me because I suddenly felt like I was on a much more level playing field, but I bet the French kids probably get annoyed by it. The one problem was that my name wasn’t on the role. I know I’m enrolled correctly because I verified it online the night before when I looked up the room number, but my name was not there. I think it was just a problem with printing because the role stopped at V at the bottom of the page, so I think they just forgot to print the second page because I was probably the only name on there since I’m the end of the alphabet. But he told me to go check with the Secretariat. I thought that was a bit weird because in America usually the professors look into any problems with their roles. But whatever, it’ll be fine I’m sure.

He did the introduction to the subject with some brief history. I was understanding about 80% of what he said I think. It takes a while to get used to a particular person’s accent sometimes so hopefully it’ll get easier. The hardest part was that he was using terminology that I don’t know if French and, he was using the French translation of names of NGOs and governmental organizations. So he was talking about stuff that I know about, but because he wasn’t using the English name for them, I had the hardest time trying to figure out what organization he was talking about. And then, the ones he did say in English, his pronunciation was do heavily accented that they were equally hard to understand. It took him saying “Saive duh Chyden” about 10 times before I figured out he was talking about Save the Children. He seems really nice, and knowledgeable about the topic, so hopefully it’ll be an interesting class and I’ll get better at following his lectures. I started out taking notes in French, but I realized that while I understood what he was saying, my ability to summarize it quickly in French wasn’t as good as my ability to synthesize it in English. The result is that my notes are probably incoherent to anyone but me. Sentences are half in english, half in French, or written in English using French acronyms (NGO translated into French is ONG and the UN is the ONU). Ah well, at least I know what they say...I think.

The typical French structure for a class, which I was taught in methodology, is that on the first day they assign the work for the semester. They like to have different people present summaries of various topics on the day they are to be discussed in class. The kind of just go down the syllabus and say “okay, who wants to present this topic?” and you pick and then it’s up to you. I was a little nervous about that because I wanted to work with a French student because at least then I’d have someone to make sure the grammar and syntax was appropriate, but I don’t know any French students in the class and I was kind of afraid of them. The problem resolved itself, I think, though because I signed up for the topic about NGOs in the EU and he asked for a second person to work on that, and another girl volunteered, and she’s French. I think we are supposed to work together, and we present in November.

After class I went down to the Secretariat to check on the role issue but the line was about 45 people long, so I put that off for another day. I was so tired from not getting enough sleep and being up early and still being exhausted from Disney that all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Which is kind of what I did. I needed to rest because I had another class that evening- l’escalade! Yep, my rock climbing class is from 6-8 on Monday evenings. I wrote down the address off-line and looked it up on a map and left in plenty of time to get there, however it turns out the address was wrong. I walked up and down the street where it was supposed to be, and nothing. I was late, and lost on the outskirts of Paris, and getting really frustrated. I stopped a woman going into a preschool and asked her if she knew where “the place where one can do rock climbing” was. (I don’t know what the word for rock gym is in French, or if that is a well known word.) It was very fortuitous that I stopped her because she said she had just noticed the place for the first time on her way there. The address I had was wrong, I was close, but looking in the wrong place. The rock gym is built UNDER the RER (train) line. “It’s in the arches,” the lady said. In the arches? How can it be IN the arches? But there it was. The arches supporting the RER rail were enclosed, and in them is the rock gym. Each arch makes a separate room for climbing. It’s really a rather ingenious design, but I never would have found it on my own.

I go in, and I don’t know if it was just because I looked bewildered, or cause I’m a college girl, but the guys at the front desk said “You’re from Sciences Po?” I nodded. They told me where to go. Luckily I hadn’t missed anything, the instructor was taking roll and then started explaining the class and the equipment and such. I was surprised to find that the class is way more girls than guys. I think there are like 34 people signed up for it and they don’t have nearly enough equipment for us all, but they are working on figuring that out. The one bad thing is that climbing shoes aren’t included in the price of the class so I can either keep climbing in my tennis shoes (which is less than ideal) or rent them every week, or buy a pair. Our class last night was mainly to teach all the safety and make sure everyone knew the basics. It was a bit confusing because while I know all the lingo and such in English, I have no background in it in French so he was using a lot of weird words.

I am so excited that my friend Cassie is also taking the class because that means I have someone to hang out with and belay with. It’s an adjustment though because climbing isn’t exactly the same in America and Europe. They use different systems to rank the difficulty of a route and have slightly different ways of doing some things. For example, I got a lecture from the instructor because I wasn’t belaying “properly”. Evidently, the way that I was taught by a professional and have been using for a long time to take up slack isn’t safe. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never had a problem catching someone when they fall, and have never let anyone plummet to their death, but because it’s a method that the instructor isn’t familiar with, I had to learn a much more complicated and slow way to do it. Oh well, that’s just in keeping with being in France.
Why can’t they do this an easier way? Because they’re French.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun to be climbing again, and I think I’m really going to like having this as a class. Although I am going to need some more exercise clothes since I wasn’t planning on this when I packed for France.
So that was my first day of class at Sciences Po. I survived. Let’s just hope the rest of the week goes as well!
Ciao-
Lyndsey