L'éxamen Jour!

 

Day Three.

Today started with a low and ended on a high.  Had my placement exam and the written part went well, I believe.  It was essentially four short answer/essay questions, starting off very easy and then getting very difficult.  Did my best and feel like I answered all of them adequately.  About an hour after I took my oral exam and I was doomed from the start.  I was all smiles and excited and the proctor I had was a very unamused man who showed no emotion when I was answering my questions.  It really threw me off too when his first question of the interview was "What are your plans?" followed by "Describe your country."  Definitely not something I had ever imagined I'd be answering and he spoke so quickly that I had to ask him several times to repeat himself and he didn't seem to like that.  It was super short and I know if he took questions in a different direction I could've proven to him that I'm a lot more competent than I appeared, but oh well.  I was pretty discouraged after that because I didn't want to get classified into a lower-level class but whatever happens, happens--so there's no point in worrying about it now.  Afterwards, Dave and I walked around to find a place to eat in Vieux Lyon (old Lyon) and the cheapest sit-down place we found was a Kebab place--it was so good!  We found the Musée Miniature et Cinéma, which we learned was six floors of miniature works of art and also original set pieces from famous movies!  That was really nice and for six euros, it was a good deal.  Then we decided to walk up to the highest part of the city where we found one of the largest Roman amphitheatre ruins!  There were actually two of them.  I think I remember the city being called Lugdunum and it was established by the Romans in 34 BC!  The theatres were built around 15 BC and from the speculated sketches of the original infrastructure, they were huge with a second-tier balcony and we saw a lot of building ruins because of the surrounding homes. 

That was just a pit-stop though because we were really on our way to the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière.  I can't explain how huge this basilique is.  It's undergoing construction so we could only go through the crypte which was basically a chapel but it was incredible.  I can only imagine what the actual main sanctuary looks like.  It was dedicated to Mary and when walking through there were pictures of depictions of Mary from different countries and Dave was explaining the background stories which were very interesting.  Unfortunately, the sky was very gloomy and cloudy so we couldn't see too far but the view was still unbelievable. 

Tonight at dinner was one of the best parts of the day.  I carried on a conversation with my host parents for about an hour!  I understood 90% of what they said to me and the rest I could kind of get at in the context.  :)  It took me a while to warm up but I think they were surprised/happy to see that I was more talkative.  They kindly helped me with some of my mispronunciations, which I'm always grateful for.  Pretty good end to the day!  :)

Movie sketches for production!

SUPER miniature wood sculpture!