Day 95: Last Day of Class

4 decembre 2009 (Day 95)
Today was the official last day of class! We did a little review for our oral exam next week and then it was off to theatre. We did really well today. There were loads of people (standing room only) and no one had any big mess ups. It is kind of bittersweet that the theatre ended, it was so much fun. My history professor came and watched us and said that he was very impressed! My Scottish neighbor John came and watched as well! He actually waited until it was all over to talk. We ended up covering a variety of topics as usual and have decided that we need to hang out sometime.
History was magnificent as usual and I am terribly sad that it is over. Monsieur Touvron was particularly funny today. We had the life of Napoleon in two hours, which is definitely not enough time. He was born in Corsica, which was owned by Italy a few years before he was born, so he had an incomprehensible accent when he came to France. This accent, not his size haunted Napoleone Buonaparte. He wrote a lot in his intimate journal. He slowly took power in France and crowned himself emperor Napoleon I in 1804 after his coup d’etat in 1799. In 1808 he started losing battles and after some bad luck in Russia he became a Prisoner in Elba in 1814. He escaped and started to traverse the Alps to go to Paris to get back the crown from Louis XVII’s brother, King Louis XVIII. Louis heard about this so he sent an army down to stop Napoleon. This army was made of Napoleon’s old soldiers, some who cried when they saw him again. They all started marching together towards Paris, in what was called the “100 Days” and Louis packed his bags and Napoleon became the emperor again. The Battle of Waterloo kicked his butt and he was sent to the Island of Saint-Helen where the British watched him until he died: naturally, from stomach cancer (thus he always had his hand on his stomach?), or because the English poisoned him with arsenic (which was found in his hair). We also talked about how Napoleon and Sarkozy have some similarities. My favorite quote came from a tangent he went on: “Men never make history, circumstances make the men.”
He also talked about the play. I had quite the epiphany about the joker and how he is the one who is allowed to make fun of the king and that is why liberty kills him, because when the people are allowed the liberty to trash talk the government, his position becomes useless.
I went to institute today, which reaffirmed the idea that I need to work on my French. It was fun going home though! We sang Christmas carols which was fun since it was “raining” and the Christmas lights are all up. It reminded me a little bit of temple square, but one million times less cool.