not such a bad day afterall

if i'd written this blog this morning, none of it would have been in the happiest of spirits.

the reason? one of the first things i did this morning (as is true of most mornings), is check my e-mail. but this morning was different in one respect. my ucsc email had been disabled. seeing as this is the email i use for anything school or eap related, you can see how this would be a big problem. my first reaction was to get really stressed out and want to call santa cruz immediately - that is until i realized it was only just past midnight there! so i gave up on that idea realizing i would have to wait till evening here to get any questions answered. my next reaction was to find out if i was alone in my plight. turns out i was. awesome. that makes me feel a whooole lot better. but not really.

[as of this evening, i have called santa cruz. turns out it wasn't just my email, but something wrong with the system this morning. and as far as my portal...which i've been locked out of for a little while now.. i am back in! :)]

so that was the rough part of my morning. oh and the fact that my phone was telling me it was done after today when it shouldn't be done till december... but i knew that one would be easy to fix as long as i went into the store.

my day definitely went uphill from there. i went and talked to christine, gave her a different email address so i wouldn't miss anything important, and had her help me figure out what my class codes were before i went and turned in the two of five signatures i already had to get enrolled in classes.

from there, i met up with kirstin, ate some bread and nutella, and tried to check my email at her place. miraculously, it worked! never in my life did i think that checking my email and having it actually let me log in would make me so happy. but it did.

later, i headed to my last class for the week. normally i would have had sociology and developmental psych today, but the soc class was cancelled. but developmental. omgosh. today. today was the first day i actually walked out of class and felt accomplished. there was no powerpoint. there was nobody in front of me with a laptop so i could try to copy their notes. and i still managed to take a bunch! yes, they were messy. yes, i'm sure some of the words i wrote down are not in fact real words in french. and yes, i am sure i missed a bunch. but! i actually understood what the professor was talking about almost the entire time. and that, my friend, is progress. oh. and i also remembered to ask the girl behind me if she could email me her notes (to fill in the gaps for me of course), so i'm hoping those will show up in my inbox soon.
because of all of this, i have to say that developmental psych is my favorite so far.

in history of lyon this week, the professor spoke wayyy too fast. and i guess we will have multiple professors? and i wish his power points contained more words.
in social psych, there was a powerpoint which i am able to copy easily, but then its hard for me to take notes on top of that. though this week i did recognize one of the cases she talked about! i would have raised my hand, but i was too afraid i might be wrong, or my french skills would make me look really dumb... and once others had spoken, i didn't want to accidentally repeat what someone else had said.
as far as slm goes. well, that's my least favorite class. but at least i have made some friends :)
and i still don't know much about my sociology class.. but i am a little bit scared.

i am learning that i never realized how important powerpoints could be. or how fast a professor speaks. or how much i miss having a syllabus for every class. but it is getting the tiniest bit easier at least. i seriously think when i go home i am going to find the international students in my classes and just offer to give them my notes, because i know what it feels like to be completely lost.

finally. tapis rouge 2010. my host dad owns an antique shop on rue auguste compte, a street with lots of antique stores and others like it. and on the first thursday of every october everyone opens there doors to the public. some red carpet is rolled out. even some red polka dots. but i finally saw the inside of my host dad's store, as well as some other with interesting rugs, or lamps, or glasses, or whatever else. it was interesting to see, and my host dad seemed happy to show it to me :)