April 2-5 First Week of French Class

 April 2-5 First Week of French Class

Tuesday April 2

Classes began on Tuesday. I showed up at 8:45 as instructed. We all gathered in a lecture hall in order to be divided into classes. After the last class had been announced and left, there were two of us left that were unassigned. I thought that maybe I didn’t exist. (Waaaah!) I was, apparently, left off the list. When I arrived late to the class, the teacher had already given the introduction to the class and half of the group had introduced themselves. I was a little discombobulated but recovered. Everyone seemed to have their books so the teacher gave me a paper copy of the chapter.

And away we went. The class moved along with a variety of activities and a good mix of speaking, listening, reading and writing. The teacher is excellent. I discovered that, although I can talk a lot, my listening comprehension to videos and recordings is abysmal. So, I guess that’s why I’m here.

After class, I googled my way to the bookstore where I bought the textbooks. 

The Libraire Internationale Kleber is humongous and I had to ask my way to the right section…twice…and then I had to ask for help finding the book. $34 poorer and I was ready for class.

Wednesday, April 3

Classes are from 9:00 am to 1:00 am every day, with a 20 minute break at about 11:00. Intense! It’s a 20 minute walk to get there. I walk along the canal from my place to the school so it’s pretty easy. Here’s a photo of the walk as I get close to the school. (Notice the rain clouds.)

The school pretty much closes at 1:00 so I need to find a place to eat my lunch. On this day, I discovered the Place de la Républiques. Because it was raining, I found a little dry spot on a bench under a tree.  

My cousin Celine showed up about 7:30 and we went to dinner at a new Thai restaurant. This is the first time that Celine and I could get together so it was good to see her again. She’s busy getting ready for a trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain for a wilderness trek on horses. 

Near the restaurant in the Place d’Austerlitz, there is a model of the city of Strasbourg. It must be created out of some kind of metal. Celine pointed out where I live so take a look. I’m going to go back and take another look.

Thursday, April 4

After class, I met Fabi and we spent the afternoon together. First we went to a lovely traditional place where I had a tarte myrtille with some pain d’épice hot chocolate. What a sugar high!!! 

After a nice long chat, (all in French) we took a stroll through Le Petit France which is one of the major tourist places in Strasbourg. Since it was cold and rainy, there weren’t many tourists. 

This area was the place where the tanners lived and did their work. Tanning hides was a very smelly business so can you imagine what it must have been like to go there, back in the day? In addition to the tanning odors, I know that people threw their personal waste in the streets and in the water. Well, that was quite the conversation. (All in French.)

Speaking of the canal, we watched the tourist boat go by. We were at a good spot to look because at one point in the canal, there is a lock so the boat has to float into the lock space, the gate is closed, then the water slowly rises. The other gate is opened and they go just a few feet before a bridge has to move itself out of the way for the boat to get through.

Here’s the end where the boat waits for the water to rise….

And here’s where the bridge moves out of the way. The first pic shows the boat approaching the bridge; the second shows the bridge starting to move; the third shows the boat going through. You can see pedestrians watching it. Fabienne told me that there are only 2 or 3 bridges in France that can move themselves out of the way for the boats. (All in French.)

After leaving the Tanners section, we walked over to the original entrance to the city —from several hundred years ago. This is where boats had to pay to enter and pay to leave. Trade was immense so Strasbourg has always been a wealthy city.

There’s a long building at the old entrances, the Quartiers Centraux, where one can walk from one side of the river to the other. Inside are rooms that are used as the “cemetery” for some of the statues from the Cathedral. Many of them have been deteriorating so they are taken to this place where they are copied and replaced or just put to rest. You can imagine that there would be some damage after a thousand years….or so.

In one of these rooms, I found a statue that looked a bit like a devil. In another, I saw gargoyles looking up with their mouths open. I think they were hoping for the rain that wasn’t quite making it indoors.

We went up to the “roof” and I took a panoramic pic of Strasbourg.

Here is my favorite…. taken from afar.

LOL. It looks like a thunderous god is about to strike the tower of the church. (Insert lightening and thunderous booming.)

We were pretty much done for the day so we walked back through the town. Along the way we found a lovely shop, Jeffy Pop. This is a most amazing place with used(?) or left-over(?) very fine name-brand clothing for a fraction of its original cost. I saw a lovely cashmere sweater for about 30€. We didn’t buy anything but it’s nice to see such deals. (This turned out to be a weird photo…don’t look at the guy.)

Thursday ended with me speaking French all afternoon. Yay, me. (!!)

Friday, April 5

We had a different teacher on this day. Her name is Magda. I don’t know what happened to Maeva. I think that we’ll just have 2 teachers who trade off because Magda gave us the days that she would teach us. They appeared to be somewhat random. Oh, well. I think I can tolerate a high level of ambiguity.

Friday was unique in that for the break at 11:00, all of the students at the school and all of the professors were invited to the break room for “snacks.”  It turned out that the counter was positively filled with delicious mouth watering petit-pains of all kinds.  Chocolate croissants and other delicious treats.

I think there were enough for about 3 for each person. I was in heaven. People were standing and sitting around everywhere. I talked to Rahat from India and Tsu Yun from Taiwan. It was quite noisy in the room so I’m not sure I heard them right but I think Rahat has her own business as a “luxury consultant.” I’m not sure what that is but it has something to do with beauty and fashion. She’s been in Strasbourg for 6 years and has 3 kids between the ages of 4 and 15. She said she’s been too busy to learn French so now she has to just take the time to learn it. Tsu Yun is young—29 years old—and she’s still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She lives in an apartment and has an uncle who lives in Strasbourg. Anyway, the break was fabulous. So was the petit-pain…or maybe it’s called viennoiseries.  Hmmmm.

After class, I decided to find some more green space. Living in a city is exciting but I do miss trees and grass and g-r-e-e-n. I discovered a kind of large neighborhood park so that’s where I had my lunch. It even had a gazebo so it reminded me of Browne’s Addition.

The park was next to, or maybe a part of a synagogue. It was built after WWII. The nazis destroyed the old one, which used to be about 1 block from me. This “new” synogogue is huge!

On the way back, I took the long way…which means I just walked and looked, expecting Google to get me home.  

I noticed some very large sculptures at 4 points on the bridge. These were reminiscent of Soviet statues that I saw a lot when I lived in Moldova. I’m not sure what they mean here.

There was a church… I thought this one was great because of the spires.

And then I ended up at a botanical garden by the university. More green. More plants!!!

Finally, when I decided to go home. I realized that I was about 1½ miles from home and I was tired. I asked Google to tell me how to get there because I wasn’t even sure which direction to go. Now, Google is my BF here in France. Sometimes one’s friends can fail and so it was. Here are the messages I got from Google when I decided to go home.

The first one….

The second one… and that would be where?

Thus ends my first week of classes…..