Putting everything in its proper place.

It's been a while since I last wrote, and a lot of lovely things have happened. The past week and a half have been very focused on finding courses, making my way through the French education system, etc, etc, and while last week this was definitely caused some stress, I think I finally have everything worked out! Ok. My classes (note - in France, you take 30 credits a semester, and that equals into around 10 classes. I'm only taking 24 credit hours, which equals 12 credit hours in the US -the minimum I can take to be a full time student. These courses also only really meet once a week for several hours at a time. Pretty different!):
Allemand Grammaire et Thème - German Grammar and Translation (I know, I'm in France, but I have to keep it up! The professor is really nice, too!)
Allemand Expression Orale - German Oral Expression (small class - 1 credit)
Allemand Actualités - The News in German-speaking countries (another 1-credit...I think it will be very interesting and challenging - it's a course for students who are studying German as their first foreign language instead of their second, so it's a bit more intense, but in a good way.)
Explication de Texte - French method of analysing litterature, etc. We're working with La Princesse de Clèves [Mme de Lafayette] a pretty interesting historical fiction from the 17th century that deals with court intrigues, etc.
Littérature et Musique (I think I'm giong to just sit in and listen to this one [i.e. not take an exam/ write a paper at the end...there are exchange students who are doing that!], since I already have 24 credits, but it discusses music, culture, etc. in France in the 17h century - works with my course on La Princesse de Clèves and is pretty interesting.)
Poétique - Litterature course on how to analyse the characters in novels (while working with two specific novels - Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein [Marguerite Duras] and La Peste [Camus]
Francais Langue Etrangère - course created specifically for the exchange students to help hone our french skills.
Art, Langues, et Patrimoine - this is actually a very unique course and I'm quite exited to have been selected (only 20 spots between french and exchange students!) We meet on Friday/Saturday six times during the semester and learn about specific sites in the region surrounding Angers. Friday = classroom time - learning vocab, etc. Saturday = excursion to the site we discussed! Pretty sweet, eh?
Now that I've sufficiently bored you, I can tell you what else I've been doing. Last weekend me and some other exchange students took a trip to Nantes (bigger city about 40 min away from Angers), and we had a marvelous time! We ate at a lovely restaurant (where the day's special included an appetizer, main course, and a desert, all of which was very delicious. I was pretty proud of myself - I was the only one to order a pâté for my appetizer, since my host mother introduced it to me. It's hard to describe and have it sound appetizing at the same time, but it's quite good and very French. A mixture of meat and seasoning in a slab form??? See what I mean?)visited the town castle and cathedrale, and did a bit of shopping (even if I only bought post cards. ^_^). A very full and satisfying day.
It feels really good to finally know my schedule! Today, I only had one course - Allemand Actualités (in which I finally pushed my shyness aside and talked to some French students!) - that ended at 10am, so I read some at the BU (Biblothèque Universitaire - a french student taught me that today. lol), went to lunch at the University Restaurant with a friend, and then had the rest of the afternoon to free! I spent sometime reading La Princesse de Clèves (the book for Explication de Texte) at the gardens connected to the Musée des Beaux-Arts (which I visited Sunday - there were some very lovely exhibits) then wandered a bit around town, shopped, and then found a café/patisserie where I could do a bit more reading. I ordered a Grande Crème, as my Dad told me I HAD to drink coffee in France, so I could say I tried, and I can't say that I really liked it. lol Ah well - hot chocolate it is! On the way back home, I bought a couple regional chocolates to taste test. One is called le Toit d'Angers (the Roof of Angers) and is blue, like the traditional roofs of the region. Funny, non? There were all very interesting to try, and quite good. I've had a rather perfect day in France (while being productive!!!).

Pictures: Le Château des ducs de Bretagne, me and a statue by the castle (no idea why she was important, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ham up to the camera ^_^), la Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul, me and my lovely sipping chocolate, and Me and my Dad??? (i.e. a chain of restaurants - again, had to be a ham)