Adventures in France: Les Relations Internationales

Day Fifty-Six

Today I had my cultural classes again. In "actualités" (news), we were split into groups and had to design the front cover page of a newspaper. With a twist! For April Fool's Day (Blagues), the French newspapers put in a fake headline on the front page of the paper. So, we had to make up a fake headline amidst the authentic news stories. We had fun with that and in my group there was a guy who is a good artist for drawing caricatures/designs. Then a group did a presentation on an article concerning "le mariage pour tous" which is a pertinent current event debate in France. This past Sunday, more than 20,000 people gathered to protest against the adoption rights of homosexuals--on the Champs-Elysées. That's not allowed and it turned out to be violent with the police. In my francophone class, today we had an exam and I think it went fairly well for me. I haven't memorized dates like that since...history class freshmen year! Haha. After we discussed the importance of language and why man has the need to communicate. Interesting stuff.

I just came back from going to a friend's apartment and having KOREAN FOOD!!! There were five of us girls from class (deux chinoise, une coréenne, et une columbienne). It was so such a great time! Jihui cooked dinner for us and Hui made an apple tart! Jihui cooked dduk-bok-ee and korean pancake (don't know the word in hangul). IT WAS SO GOOOD! Like from the restaurant, which makes sense since her mother is a cook. Jeez! Loveeeeee it, haha. And then we had apple tart and turns out Elsa ALSO brought an apple tart...so we had to finish that! After an authentic Korean meal, two pies, and five cups of green tea--we went to the living room to relax and chat. We compared different things between our respective countries, talked about relationships, gave opinions, gave advice, etc. Almost 4 hours later, it was time to go home! I can't believe we talked non-stop almost as long as I have class each day! This is EXACTLY why I came here--to have these moments where I'm really engaged in the language with others. I told them we have to make this a weekly event and everyone pitch in to buy ingredients, haha. :)

P.S. I recieved my grade from last week's exam on compréhension écrite (written comprehension) and I recieved a 15.5/20! Why am I happy? Because anything over a 15 is considered an A according to the French grading scale! Weird--I know! But she did write "Très bon travail! Bravo!" haha. Just another aspect of the differences between the US and France.