Day 141: Art History & Cake

19 janvier 2010 (Day 141)
Today I woke up and went to an art history class. This class is all about the age of antiquity, so the 5th century in Athens. The teacher is really nice and the students are a lot quieter. The classes here are a lot different than in the states. You have class once a week and it is normally for an hour and then you have a ‘supplemental class’ that the teacher gives that is like a homework/preparation for the test class that you are supposed to go to. The semester is also only 12 weeks, which means for most of my classes I will have a total of 24 hours in the classroom being taught, versus the 64 hours in the states. I also went to the TD (the supplemental class) for the art history class. For their TD they have to get in small groups and research and do a presentation on a problem related to the various art history subjects she has. She got around to us so I explained that we were foreign students and she proposed us tagging along with a group and then doing a dossier (aka really big booklet thingy) on that subject. I don’t know how I feel about this. This class seems like it could be okay, but Mr. Oram has just put every other art history teacher to shame. (And ditto M. le Prof with French. :] Je t’aime )
On another side note, Hannah was going to just follow one Licence, or major, until Jane advised her against it. Hannah has therefore been tagging along with me to all the classes that interest me. A side note to the side note: The majors here in France are very specific. You have no choices. It is pretty much like doing what is the advised 4-year plan for your major except there aren’t really options and you can’t skip around.
I was really excited about the social psychology class that they offered. And once again, my mad choosing skills led me to an awful class. Hannah and I smartened up and stayed for only 15 minutes. The topic should have been really interesting, but the teacher was an older lady who was dry and who didn’t do powerpoint or anything so it was hard with notes and just how she taught wasn’t fun and it wasn’t ‘foreign friendly.’
Since I saved myself 115 minutes of class, I decided to use my extra time to go for a run. I went to the hippodrome, or horse track. It’s big! I didn’t realize how big it was until I was tired after going around it once. There was some man playing wall ball. In the dark. I don’t know how he was doing it. There were also several people with dogs. It is funny because I saw lots of dogs but no poop. In the city you see lots of poop but no dogs. How ironic.
After I ran and showered I called up Sam Fick (from Louisiana) to see if he wanted to go to the Autour de Monde Galette des Rois party. He said yes so we caught the tram to the party. It was good talking to Sam. He was telling me about his idea to rent a car and go on a road trip. This is a most excellent idea and I am hoping that we are going to do it during winter break in February. Sam enjoyed his first taste of the kings cake, we met some crazy giant (seriously SO big) dutch kid who speaks lots of languages and left early because Sam was getting a heat rash, lol.