France - Post 4 - House & 1st day among new friends

Hey everyone,

I wanted to start out this post by uploading some pictures of the apartment where I am staying.

This first room is the main living room. I learned today that my host brother Ferdinand has claimed this as his den. To the right is the TV but I didn't feel it too necessary to fit that in. The 2 glass doors lead into another small room where Bruno does his work and whatnot. The following photo is of this room.

There's not much to say about this room except I spend absolutely 0 time in here. I think I was moving which is why the picture isn't too clear. Now on to the next picture: 

 The Kitchen: This is where I spend about 20 min of my mornings making breakfast and eating it alone. This is not as sad as it sounds since Bruno is a teacher and so we are on different schedules. Now for other pictures and stories!

This post was originally just going to talk about the first day of classes but I decided to toss in some house pictures. I will put in family pictures at some point also so don't worry about that!

The first day of class was interesting. The climate is unforgiving here. Between walking in the wind and rain, riding in a somewhat hot & crowded subway, back to the wind and ending in a well-heated room you body struggles to adjust at first. That isn't uncommon but I just thought I'd mention it.
The pace for my first day was all right. I have actually switched classes into a supposedly harder one not because I think my French is so good but rather because I want to be pushed as hard as I can in the French courses during these two weeks. I mean, it IS intensive so I would like everything to be intense to push me to my limits and force me out of my comfort zone.

The teacher I had for yesterday is named Anne and the teacher I had today is named Valerie. This leads me to another reason for which I switched courses. After speaking with Anne at the end of the course about the classes I was informed that Valerie is a bit more focused of forcing people to talk in her class and as much as I want to learn how to spell the most basic words which have the most obscure spelling like the word for bird (not even going to try to learn how to spell it), I will be using my words a lot more when expressing myself and communicating here in France than a pencil or a text. That being said, I want to speak more! So I switched from the 1pm-5pm classes to the 9am-1pm classes. Luckily, I am not jet lagged anymore. If I still were, it would comparable to trying to take intensive French from 3am-7am. The second day of class today was still a little rough though but not unbearable.
To finish off the note on classes, we were told that we could participate in both classes, which would equate to a normal school day with a <5 min break every 2 hours. I may have a lot of ambition but even with it, I would not be able to stay awake the entire time. I actually think the 2 classes are very similar though.

This will help me segue into the next part & picture since we have been split between the two classes.

The trainee Gang (several missing): From left to right - Katie (sorry about the face cutoff but you can blame Carolyn :p), Fitz (Who is blocked), Terry, Joseph, Shea, me, Kaitlyn, Elena, Neil. And sorry in advance for any of you that read this and I've misspelled your names. I've had class with almost everyone and from what I've heard all the students have a great comprehension already for French. However, just like with any other language INCLUDING English, a concept that many foreigners to English-speaking regions don't understand even though it still holds true in their own tongue, we don't understand all the accents that Paris has to offer & believe you me, there are a lot due to France also being a mixture of many cultures &, thus, many dialects.

Anyways, those of us who remained after grabbing a couple beers took a walked and ended up on the river Seine. This is where Le Musée du Louvre is located upon which we happened by chance. Funny, eh? Due to the sheer immensity of the area I took it upon myself to take some panorama shots and to really appreciate the shot I posted them up here in the original size!

This first picture is actually L'institut de France if I'm not mistaken on the name or spelling (I remember reading that somewhere on the building). Behind me lays the Pont D'art (I also read this name off of the side so my apologies if I read the wrong sign:$ ).

 You may have noticed that apart from the breathtaking view there is an infinite number of pad locks of various colors, sizes, & styles attached to the gate of the railing. You can purchase on of these from the venders on the bridge, make a design, then place it on the bridge. The bridge is completely filled so consequently we figured that locks are periodically cut off for more to be put on and keep the lock-selling business boomin'.

The next 2 pictures were taken inside the square and on the opposite side where Le Louvre stands and L'arc de Triumph. By this time it was around 10pm or something and no one had any real desire to see it because we were all starving. The purpose of our drink stop was actually for food but then we decided to share our first official cheers on our first official night out. Who can blame us?

With these pictures I will end this post. I already had to re-write it once since I accidently exited out earlier :x

Thanks for reading and I probably won't post again until this weekend.
Until next post! Cheers!