Back to (Catholic) school...

School started this week and it was kicked off with some placement tests and a tour of the facilities.  We're taking an intensive month to month course at l'Institut Catholique.  It was established as a university in 1229 (OLD right?) and "inherited" by a Catholic institution.  So, here we are at a catholic school.  The university specializes in theology, philosophy and religious studies.  Aside from the polish monk that's in my class and the name, the French language program isn't all that "catholic".  They don't start the day with confession or anything - but we dress like catholic school children for a more authentic experience.  It was a cold walk for P in his shorts this morning.  P and I are in different classes, which means that we have designated time apart from each other, which was a bit of a surprise/let down at first - but really, it's better that we spend just 19 hours/day together instead of the whole 24.  This will be healthy, I often find myself at a near breaking point at hour 22 or 23.

We took a tour of the school on the first day, and I swear we went up a set of stairs right out of the Harry Potter wizard school - all dark wood and big, and then it led to a hallway with a locked armoire full of what looked like spell books.  For serious.  It better be french we're learning and not spells.

I'm in a level that's a bit further along than I think I should be, but I think I can follow along if I just put in extra time on my own...and if I work with the polish monk, because he seems to be the best in class at this point.  Show off.  We're learning subjunctives now, here's an excerpt from the text I brought from Canada:

For most verbs, the stem for the forms of the subjunctive is found by dropping the -ent  of the third-person plural form of the present indicative, and by adding the subjuntive endings: -e, 

-es, -e, -ions and -ent.  

I'm lucky I have this textbook which is written in ENGLISH.  IT's ALL IN FRENCH DURING CLASS.  I've never really studied a language before and besides my native languages, I don't speak anything else.  Learning a language is ha-ard.  I didn't even know what a "subjunctive" was before yesterday.   The truly difficult part is just knowing the linguistic and grammatical terms - imagine reading a sentence in english with words like, "direct object pronoun", "subject", "indirect object" etc..., just deciphering it in english is hard enough (this is coming from someone who knows just enough grammatical terms to mad lib).  Essentially it's like learning 2 new languages.  "Grammar" and French.  Mad props to anyone who is fluent in another language from studying in adulthood.  

Aside from feeling ESL as well as FSL (it's FLE in french), I'm really excited.  Yay, I love back to school and that perfect first blank page in a notebook where you write everything in the nicest, neatest handwriting (according to my friends I've got ugly handwriting) - the only difference for going back to school this time is that I didn't start the year with new LA gear running shoes.  Don't think the pink and white running shoes would cut it here in France.  

In other exciting news, we got a whack of books from Amazon.co.uk (a gift certificate; I wonder if spending it will help the British economy).  Among them, the biggest, most badass and most occupational-health-threatening to the courier is my "Larousse Gastronomique: the World's Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia".  I think it weighs in at 4-5 kilos (I'm all metric now, so convert it yourself) - I was just informed that it just crushed a stray hazlenut shell (christmas carnage). 

 and...WE HAVE VISITORS!!  J and V are staying for over a week, and eating only gets better with more people.