School!

So it has been a busy week--I can't believe tomorrow's already Thursday! It's flown by.
Monday I had class, but I woke up Sunday with a bad cold that I think I caught from Becky, so after class Megan and I went to L'Institut Catholique so that I could find out where my classroom was. The only information I had was the address of the building and that a staff member at IES had said it would be on a bulletin board. We found it ok, but there were a lotttt of bulletin boards and none of them seemed to have the history information. And there were a lot of people around me, mostly my age but all speaking French very quickly, which was kind of frightening. I felt about two feet tall and like I had "AMERICAN" written on my forehead. I eventually went into an office and asked for help and they told me where to find the bulletin board, and I was able to locate the classroom as well. Then we went to a French pharmacy so I could get some medicine...(p.s. after two trips since I've been here, I now swear by French pharmacists/medicines, this is the fastest I've ever felt better from a cold)
Tuesday I woke up and felt icky and couldn't believe I had to go take a class with real French people on a day I felt so awful. My second IES class got canceled so I went home and relaxed before heading over to Cato. I found the classroom but was really early so I decided to wait outside. A girl came up to me a few minutes later and asked if I was waiting for the history class, so I said yes and that I wasn't sure whether or not to go in. She must have heard the accent because she asked where I was from, and we talked for a few minutes--she said that there were lots of foreign students at Cato and I shouldn't be nervous. Her name was Caroline and she was from southern France. I was really happy at how well I was able to keep up with the conversation. When class started, there were 12 students, including 4 foreigners (me, another girl from IES, and 2 German students), and the prof is really nice, which made me feel a lot better. I understood everything he said, but I got confused when he handed us a sheet of paper with a list of about 50 books on it and said "pick whichever of these you want to read, I starred a few that are particularly helpful." Basically we come to class twice a week (one lecture, one discussion) and then read whatever we want on the subject on our own. I'm still really confused about how much we are expected to read but I guess I'll figure it out.
After I got home, Megan and I had to leave right away because one of the chancellors from Richmond was taking all the Richmond students in Paris out to dinner (he was president of UR in the 80s and 90s, he and his wife love Paris and they come every year). We went to a really fancy restaurant near the Eiffel Tower, and we all had three-course meals and wine. I had chocolate souffle for the first time, which was delicious! It was really nice of him. We got back really late, though.
Today I had the first lecture meeting of my Cato class, in addition to two IES ones. But Becky joined my class, which is awesome! But yeah, 2 hours of being talked at in a foreign language is kind of scary. He were mostly talking about the Congress of Vienna and the immediate aftereffects so I was glad I knew a little bit about that from Intro to IR at home. I got most of the stuff from the lecture, and the stuff I didn't I Wikipediaed. I have to start keeping my ears open for a topic for the 10-page single spaced paper I have to write (in French) at the end of the semester...we can choose any topic we want that relates to the period and write about it.
After class Megan met me at the Louvre and we made the quickest visit ever (I had to make an independent visit to see 18th-century French paintings for art history). Hence the above photo.
Oh, I would also like to observe that the people who drive the 1 train on the Paris metro should all have their licenses revoked because they are obviously on some sort of drugs.
So I put all my pictures on Picasa (I think I'll probably run out of space before the end of the semester but for now it works). Here's the link to my "public page":
http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz