oh i AM here to go to school! who knew?

classes. for those of you (grandma) who had been wanting to hear a little bit about my classes, here it is.

this was the first week i have actually had ALL of my classes. actually, i think there was one other week i technically did too, but this week was the start of my new class as well.

tuesdays i have histoire de lyon and psychologie social (pretty sure you guys can figure out what those are in english!)
i am not a big fan of my histoire de lyon class. we have had three different professors so far, one of which talked wayyy too fast for me to possibly be able to understand. i am taking this class pass/no pass because it isn't doing anything for me back home other than giving me some units, so there is really no need to mess up my gpa when i don't do well. what have i gotten out of the class so far? the gauls are from lyon. we have heard a lot about the gauls. and there are a few churches of some significance that are still around today. my notes in this class are terrible. there are barely any french students in the class, which means getting notes from someone is a little trickier. we found someone who will email us his notes... but not until the end, and then he'll send them all together. i mean thanks? but i feel like that's going to be terrifying to finally receive that email with tons of info i should have been learning all semester.
i am much happier with psychologie social. for one, it is actually doing something for me back home. there is always a powerpoint and the professor talks slow enough to be able to understand her. oh, and we just got a new professor... i'd forgotten that they were going to switch half way through. i love when she (both professors) talks about things i have already learned at home because it makes me feel like i really know what's going on. the only unfortunate part, however, is that we never get to see the videos that correspond to the studies the way we do back home. and i love the videos.

wednesdays i have slm. i really don't like that class. it's almost four hours long. and really boring. we get a break in the middle, and a lot of people took advantage of that and left this week. i wanted to so bad, but i also wanted to be able to say i actually went to all of my classes this week... so i stuck around. but hey, at least i have class with my friends? i got a couple postcards written even :)

thursdays i have sociologie: problematique du genre and psychologie du developpement. which i haven't had in about a month. it felt a little strange to back in those classes this week.
sociologie is basically all presentations. mine will be in december.. though i need to figure out what's going on with that! but yesterday, the second presentation led to a class wide discussion with people talking over each other and getting really into it. i do like this class for the most part, but sometimes it is hard to know what's going on because people talk so quietly that even if i could understand what they were saying, i can't always hear them! speak up frenchies! this week's discussion was something about girls going out at night at 3am and what reactions they might get. or something. and blaming guys for everything. and then one girl deciding to defend the guys. and the guys trying to defend themselves. i don't really know to be honest. with everyone talking over each other and talking so fast i was pretty lost.
psychologie du developpement doesn't have powerpoints, but the professor definitely talks slowly enough that it isn't really a problem. before we stopped having classes for a long time, i had actually taken a bunch of notes myself. this week, however, i realized there was a french girl with a laptop in front of me that i could actually see, so i mostly just copied all of her notes instead of paying slightly better attention and taking my own. i mean i was still listening, but sometimes its hard to take that many notes that fast, so it's nice to just be able to copy them :) of course, if the girl got a little behind, then i would take some of my own.

and finally fridays. societe francaise contemporain. this class is only for californians. because we are such a large group though, half took it for the first half of the semester. and obviously, i am in the second group seeing as i started this week. the professor is pretty easy to understand which is nice, and today we talked about what is typical french/lyonnais food. like pig. and all of its parts. ew for some of them. we were also handed an article about cheese which i think i am supposed to read.

as far as homework goes though? i don't really feel like i have much. i guess i managed to choose classes without midterms, which means i'm not freaking out about those right now the was some are. butttt it means i will probably stressing out extra come time for finals. which by the way i have no idea when they are. both psych classes i know are in january. but when i tried to ask my social psych professor when exactly she just looked at me like i was crazy for wanting to know right now and told me she didn't know except that it will be in january. thankssss. i was hoping to maybe plan some trips.
for slm i have a small paper most weeks. and by that i mean that the longest one has been 500 words.
and i guess i should be trying to read stuff for the other classes? i don't even know really. i've been trying to read freud... in french. to be honest it hasn't been going so well.

things are getting easier though. which is always a good sign.