First Week of Language Camp

Okay so I know I said I would write about the architecture and all the pretty buildings here in Vichy, but I have taken a thousand pictures so I’ll need to go through them and pick my favorites!

For now… My first day of Language Camp… err week of language camp. I’ve been so busy its taken me this long!

Pole Universitaire de Vichy

Day 1: The ISL and IBF (me) students, were to meet in room P1 at 10 am. We began the day with an orientation. We were welcomed by a breakfast selection of apple juice, orange juice, coffee, and pastries. I had the coffee and chocolate pastry. The pastry was absolutely delicious and super flaky!

Yumm!

I went back for some orange juice and one (or three!) more pastries. Geoffrey Heels, the university liaison, walked us through a slideshow about the city and ended it with the possibilities of this semester. Pretty funny lol.

Some students may walk out of here married! Lol

He then presented the 3 french instructors and one of them took over the presentation. The instructor let us know that we would be given a placement exam to determine whether we would be in French 1, 2 or 3. My history with French is two years of high school courses. That was seven years ago! I did remember some of what I learned, so I was able to decipher a few questions and fill some of the test out. Knowing how to speak Spanish also helped me with some of the words and the sentence structure. I didn’t feel too confident when I turned it in so I was pretty sure I would end up in the Level 1 course.

After handing the test in we were dismissed for lunch. We had a few hours before we had to return for the results, so Allissa and I took a tour of the school. We went to administrative offices to purchase some meals, which were put on a student card. The price is 3.25 euros each. We headed to the cafeteria to check out the food and the lunch process. I haven’t actually ate there yet so I don’t have any pictures, but it did look like a very healthy serving of food!

The cafeteria building. Its separate from the school building. It’s called “Le Restaurant Universitaire”.

Allissa and I headed back to the residence and waited until it was time to go back to school. The residence is about a 5-7 minute walk from school, so going back and forth isn’t too bad.

We met in the same classroom at 1:30pm. The first teacher called out a list of names of the students that would be in her class. It was a group of 6, one of which I knew spoke French very well, so I figured that was Level 3. The second teacher called her group, and the remaining students were with the last teacher. I was the last one called in the second group! Some students just wrote their name on the top of the exam, so the fact that I attempted some questions must have qualified me for the Level 2 course. I was pretty bummed I wouldn’t be in the same class as Allissa, but I was super excited about being challenged and getting more out of the course.

I headed to my new classroom with the other Level 2 students. We filled in the desks and then the teacher began the introductions. My professor’s name is Marie Godet. She began by telling us that we were not to speak any English in the classroom. Also, translation devices or dictionaries were not permitted. For the rest of the course, she would be our live dictionary. At this point I was trembling in my desk and a hair short of passing out. I really wanted to get up and say “Excuses-moi, I need to be in Level 1 please!” lol.

We were paired up so we could introduce another classmate to the class. There are only 11 students in total, so guess who got paired up with the teacher? That’s right, me! -_-  I did however make it through the introductions. It seemed like we were all over the place on the first day, but I think she was trying to pinpoint our strengths and weaknesses. I decided to stick it out and it hasn’t been so bad.

I wasn’t sure what materials I would need for school so I ended up scribbling all of my notes in my calendar. I headed straight to the Monoprix after school for a notebook. I spent the rest of the evening rewriting my notes and reviewing conjugations, numbers, the alphabet, and words the teacher used in class often that I did not know. I really REALLY like the notebooks here. France (Europe?) uses size A4 paper. Its longer than letter-sized paper. The pages are lined vertically and horizontally, which makes it really easy to line things up. There was a paper version with tons of lines. That one made me super dizzy just looking at it, so I just stuck with grids.

Cahier (notebook)

Day 2-5: For the rest of the week we met for 3 hours from 9:30 to 12:30, rather than just two hours. I am so happy with the progress I have made this week. We’ve learned how to introduce ourselves and others, nationalities, names of countries, how to tell the date and time, numbers, days of the weeks, and months.

I’ve had to really focus hard during class to understand what the teacher is saying when she speaks. If she talks in a couple of sentences at a time, I can usually tell what she is saying. I get lost when she goes on and on though. She is really good about pointing, using facial expressions and body language, enunciating, and speaking slowly so that really helps as well. I can tell that I am improving my listening and comprehension skills.

We complete a lot of exercises during class, and worksheets for homework.

I am excited to see what we learn in the next week! I believe we have another exam at the end of the week, before starting classes. That makes me pretty nervous, but I am studying plenty to be prepared.

I’ll close with pictures of my student ID. This card gets me lots of discounts, it’s pretty magical!

Front side

Back side

Update: We can also use our ID to check out materials from the library. We took a tour of the “Mediatheque de l’Orangerie”. The librarian gave the tour in French so I missed half of it. It looks like we will have a lot of resources available to us there.

Until next time!

XOXO -Karen