September 9, 2010

i love thursdays!

Thursday are officially my favorite day of school :) My classes don't start until 10:20am! its so nice to be able to sleep in. And then I only have 3 classes- philosophy, sport, and history... I still don't understand anything in philosophy or history, but thats okay :) My philosophy teacher writes the notes down on the board so that's really helpful because I can at least kind of follow along and I noticed that there are a lot of cognates in philosophy so thats good too. So I can understand the words that she writes down, but the only problem is that I can't understand the overall meaning and concept haha. I've never taken a philosophy class before and its extra difficult having my first one be in French :) but oh well! Oh and the notes i took for history class today consisted of pretty little drawings down the side of my page haha. My teacher just lectures without writing anything down so I can't catch anything. I believe we are learning about how WWII effected the countries involved economically, but I'm not sure. I really wish I could understand because he says les Etats-Unis (USA) and les americains a lot, but I don't know what he's saying about them! haha. very frustrating. However, I love this whole no stress thing ;) its awesome. Something I noticed while sitting in class (not taking notes) is that the french students are very serious when it comes to note taking. Their notes are so neat and tidy! If I learn anything in class its going to be how to take notes like them. They color code different sections and use rulers to make straight lines and highlight key points, I feel like they all took a class teaching them how take amazingly organized and beautiful notes (John, maybe you'll learn this in touchstones haha ;) ) anyway, the few notes that I do have are terrible compared to everyone else in the class. Even the guys have crazy organized notes. Im jealous. Oh and the paper they use is a lot different than what we use in the US. Its like graph paper but with more vertical lines. Hard to explain, but I think it might be a reason for everyone's neat handwriting here. Im still not used to writing on it. There are so many lines! Oh and they ALWAYS write in pen. Even in math class. Everything you turn in and all your notes are in pen. I couldn't believe that they did math in pen. I was always taught never use pen when you do math. The whiteout business is the business to be in here ;).
I think im going to like my sport class too! Today we just got to pick groups but next week we start playing sports. You could pick 5 different groups and each group does 3 different sports throughout the year. Super confusing haha. But the group I chose does handball, track, and badminton. My teacher was really really nice and told me that since i didn't know what handball was and since I don't have to take the bac (the huge test at the end of the year that determines if you graduate or not) I can try a sport and change if I don't like it :) Everyone was jealous. The other sports I can try are ping pong (yes, theres a pingpong class here!), gymnastics, dance, weight-lifting, basketball, volleyball, and aerobics. I think it will be a fun class. Plus a lot of my new friends/acquaintances are in it. :)
School got out earlier for me today 3pm instead of 5pm so that was nice :) Oh and I had 2 hours for lunch! awesome :) Anyway, this evening Isabelle, Amandine and I went to the Poney Club where they both usually ride horses. I met a few of their friends and then we watched the members ride for a while. It was cool because I haven't ever seen horses jumps and stuff before. Plus, I got to go see all the little ponies :) they were cute. Ill post some pictures later because Im too lazy to go get my camera right now.
Welp. tomorrow I have 4 hours of English class.... a little pointless, but oh well!
off to bed :)
xoxo
emily

2 comments:

  1. so glad you had a nice day. thinking of you a lot! would love to see a photo of the French kids cool notes! you know that is right up my alley!

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  2. Hi emmy -

    Just wondering - do you have to take tests in the classes? So when you say you can't understand a thing in a class that doesn't matter because you won't be taking a test???? If so, AWESOME! If not, how will you do it since you can't understand? Especially the class philosophy. A very hard subject I might add. I struggled back in the day. Can you let me know? I'm very curious!!

    xoxo Auntie Jen

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