Orientation

So yesterday and today we had orientation almost all day. The only good thing about orientation is the ridiculous catered lunches we have. They take almost two hours to eat, typical of the French. (Eating and the metro consume all my time here, I swear.) Yesterday we had profiteroles du crabe (cream puffs with crab instead of cream), roast duck with glazed turnips, and chocolate mousse. Today it was cream of mushroom, a really good fish with pesto, and gratin au fruits. They eat well here. Other than that orientation was pretty much useless...lectures on academics and safety and the field trips we're taking and how to meet French people, etc etc.
Today we took our language placement test, because tomorrow we start propédeutique, the intensive language review that we have for the next week. They divided us into ten groups but there are only three possible levels...I think I'm in the middle one, which is fine with me. They named the groups after metro stops and neighborhoods...my group is named St. Michel, the metro stop right near Notre Dame.
Our dinners with our host family look like they are going to be Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Yesterday Megan and I met our friend Maria in the Latin Quarter for a cheap Italian meal, and tonight we went out for Indian. I think after this we are going to start investigating the frozen food store our host mom pointed out. Right before we left for dinner, our host mom told us that tonight there were fireworks (les feux d'artifice in French) at La Défense, the financial/skyscrapery quarter of Paris that we can see from our metro stop. So we waited around for the fireworks, which were pretty cool. Only Paris would have random fireworks on a random Tuesday night. La Défense has La Grande Arche, a modern arch which is exactly in line with the Arc de Triomphe. It was pretty cool to look at both.
Tomorrow, propédeutique and perhaps the catacombs!