Back to school

So I must apologize for being so bad at this blogging thing. As it turns out, blogging about your semester abroad is great in theory, but not so much in practice. At least not when you are at a school like Sciences Po and struggling to keep up with the coursework in a foreign language while still enjoying life in Europe. So I’m afraid I’ll have to give up on trying to blog in the past tense, and just skip to current time, and hopefully once the semester is over, go back and fill in some blanks. I am back in classes after the holiday break. We had 2 weeks off which was nice, but kind of mean because it has made it very hard to get back into school mode. I survived my first Christmas away from family, and had a great time ringing in the New Year Paris-style while showing my visiting friend Della around my favorite city. It was fun to do some of the tourist things that I hadn’t taken time to do yet this trip, although being a tourist is exhausting.

Wednesday I was sitting in my big french lecture class on the “Arab World”, when this alarm starts going off. Now in America, when a fire alarm goes off there is rarely any doubt about what it is. It’s exceedingly loud and there is usually some sort of flashing red light for the hearing impaired so that there is no way to mistake it for a cell phone, car alarm, or egg timer. Anyway, France, being such a historic (read “old”) country, hasn’t gotten around to embracing the latest in fire alarm technology. As far as I know my apartment doesn’t even have one. All this to say that when this alarm starts going off no one, including the professor, knows for sure if it is a fire alarm. He paused midsentence and said “What is that?” And someone in the class hollered that it was a fire alarm. “Oh,” said the professor, who then promptly returned to his lecture by finishing the previous thought. A few chuckles and murmurs sounded around the auditorium. He paused again, “What? What is it? Do you want to evacuate?” We all looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t think it’s important,” he continued and then added with a slight smile, “Besides, if it was a real fire, those little sprinklers in the ceiling would come on. Now what was I saying...” The buzzing was still going on in the background, but it sounded more like a microwave than the deafening alarms we have in most public buildings in the US. The professor continued with his lecture while all 100 or so students remained seated in the basement auditorium taking notes. A few minutes later the door to the room bursts open and in run two of the little guys who sit at the front desk in each of ScPo’s buildings but whose exact job duties are unknown even by them, I suspect. Anyway, they run in all flustered and the first one sees us all sitting there and his eyes get big and he goes, “What are you doing?! Don’t you hear the alarm?! You have to leave when you hear the alarm, everyone get out! Quickly!” So everyone starts gathering up their stuff and putting on their coats, but not fast enough to satisfy the little men, who are standing there flailing their arms and shouting “Quickly! Get out!” So we all file up the stairs and out of the building into the courtyard, and because the narrow street beyond is already clogged with the other students whose teachers did decide to heed the alarm, we stop in the courtyard, but the little men herding us start yelling “No! You must go to the street!” So we all spill out into the street and there is no where to go. So now there are 150 students and and professors standing on this one-way street in the cold with cars honking to be let through. We just barely all get out there when one of the little men comes running out and says “The exercise is over! Everyone back in.” Well by this point there is 30 minutes left in class and so our professor, without announcing anything, looks at his watch, looks around, shrugs, and just starts walking away down the street. My friends and I look at each other, shrug, and follow. And that was the end of class. This place is crazy.