Door to IAU Main
I admit, I’ve been a little bit tempted to cheat and backdate some entries on this blog so it looks like I’ve been posting more regularly than I have been. Mais non, I won’t do that. But it is harder than I thought it would be, making time to post regularly, especially now with classes in full swing.
Speaking of classes! Let me tell you about my school and what I am taking this semester. IAU is an American university study abroad program, so it is not as though I am just taking classes straight up at a French university, surrounded by real live French students. Pro: I’m not overwhelmed by university-level French studies and expected to know everything about life here already like most the students who have lived in France all their lives. Con: It’s harder to meet actual French students. But four out of my five professors are actual-factual French men and women, and they do their best to expose us to the culture. And as I’ve written before, IAU has a working relationship with the French political science school next door, resulting in a handful of their students taking classes with us! I don’t have any of them in my classes, but I see them around, and now and then, they hold fun little culture-sharing sessions about French board games or French music, topics like those. Otherwise, the students here come from all across America, with a handful from other places, too, like Canada, England, and even China. There are just over a hundred of us in total, which gives it a cozy feel—in a way, almost like being back in high school again, where you at least recognize the faces of pretty much everyone who goes here. Not like big old Penn State!
Speaking of classes! Let me tell you about my school and what I am taking this semester. IAU is an American university study abroad program, so it is not as though I am just taking classes straight up at a French university, surrounded by real live French students. Pro: I’m not overwhelmed by university-level French studies and expected to know everything about life here already like most the students who have lived in France all their lives. Con: It’s harder to meet actual French students. But four out of my five professors are actual-factual French men and women, and they do their best to expose us to the culture. And as I’ve written before, IAU has a working relationship with the French political science school next door, resulting in a handful of their students taking classes with us! I don’t have any of them in my classes, but I see them around, and now and then, they hold fun little culture-sharing sessions about French board games or French music, topics like those. Otherwise, the students here come from all across America, with a handful from other places, too, like Canada, England, and even China. There are just over a hundred of us in total, which gives it a cozy feel—in a way, almost like being back in high school again, where you at least recognize the faces of pretty much everyone who goes here. Not like big old Penn State!
Librarian with 14th century illuminated book
Mes Cours:
1) FR 302: Advanced French Conversation & Composition (French) – We practice speaking and writing and listening and reading by studying real French magazines, newspapers, informational videos, etc. Our teacher, Estelle, a fairly young, blonde, French woman, is very good at making sure every member of the class says at least a few sentences every class period. And she selects interesting articles for us to study and give our opinions on. Over these first few weeks, we learned a whole bunch of vocabulary about magazines, words for things like ads, headlines, tables of content, monthly vs. weekly periodicals—words you would pick up by living here, but that you wouldn’t necessarily study in a French class in the U.S. We’ve been talking about the issue of le mariage pour tous (gay marriage)—the French Assembly just passed the bill, so if the Senate does as well, that’ll be 100% legal in the country! And today we went on a fieldtrip to the Bibliothèque Méjanes, the local library, which is located in an old usine d’allumettes (match factory) and hosts free concerts and art exhibitions all the time. Imagine that—it used to be a place to create fire, and now, filled with books both new and ancient, fire is the last thing they would want there! What a marvelous contradiction.
1) FR 302: Advanced French Conversation & Composition (French) – We practice speaking and writing and listening and reading by studying real French magazines, newspapers, informational videos, etc. Our teacher, Estelle, a fairly young, blonde, French woman, is very good at making sure every member of the class says at least a few sentences every class period. And she selects interesting articles for us to study and give our opinions on. Over these first few weeks, we learned a whole bunch of vocabulary about magazines, words for things like ads, headlines, tables of content, monthly vs. weekly periodicals—words you would pick up by living here, but that you wouldn’t necessarily study in a French class in the U.S. We’ve been talking about the issue of le mariage pour tous (gay marriage)—the French Assembly just passed the bill, so if the Senate does as well, that’ll be 100% legal in the country! And today we went on a fieldtrip to the Bibliothèque Méjanes, the local library, which is located in an old usine d’allumettes (match factory) and hosts free concerts and art exhibitions all the time. Imagine that—it used to be a place to create fire, and now, filled with books both new and ancient, fire is the last thing they would want there! What a marvelous contradiction.
2) PSY 304: Human Development in a Cultural Context (English) – Basically a developmental psychology class, but taught as it would be in a French classroom. We don’t really do much cross-cultural comparison, as I would have liked, but it’s interesting even so, because we are studying different psychologists and theories than we would be in America. For example, there’s not a word about Piaget and his stages of development, but plenty of discussion of “The English School of Psychoanalysis”, featuring names like Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion and their more modern takes on Freudian concepts. My teacher, Annabel, works as a counselor for new parents when she isn’t at IAU, so she has lots of anecdotes and insights into babyhood and families here in France. She’s very sweet. I just had my very first French-style exam in this course the other day. Turns out the French do not believe in multiple choice; instead, they prefer a test format more like “Okay, you know what we’ve talked about, so write as much as you can telling me everything you know about the subject, you have one hour and thirty minutes and as much paper as you could possibly need, okay, GO!!” Which I actually quite like! No need to memorize finicky ways of phrasing questions, you just have to describe and use examples and basically prove that you learned things.
3) FR/FLM 356: France as Seen Through its Movies (French) – Film is a huge part of French culture, especially here in Aix, which isn’t far from the Cannes of the world-famous film festival. Our professor, Muriel, is a tiny little gray-haired woman, the head of IAU’s French Honors Program, and she is astonishingly enthusiastic about every aspect of cinema. We’ve learned vocabulary about film techniques, like the angles of the camera in relation to its subject, different kinds of cuts and transitions, and (very important to Muriel!) the fact that you do not just Frenchify “director” into “directeur” but instead you must say “réalisateur”. We’ve watched just one complete film so far—Laurent Cantet’s documentary-esque drama Ressources Humaines—which taught us a lot about French working life and the grève (workers’ strike), which is a thousand times more common here than it is in the U.S. And we’ve just started a second film, which is a kind of comedic, very Marseillais version of a love story, called Marius et Jeannette. It's quirky and funny so far, prompting discussions of the different accent and habit of exaggerated speech in Marseille.
3) FR/FLM 356: France as Seen Through its Movies (French) – Film is a huge part of French culture, especially here in Aix, which isn’t far from the Cannes of the world-famous film festival. Our professor, Muriel, is a tiny little gray-haired woman, the head of IAU’s French Honors Program, and she is astonishingly enthusiastic about every aspect of cinema. We’ve learned vocabulary about film techniques, like the angles of the camera in relation to its subject, different kinds of cuts and transitions, and (very important to Muriel!) the fact that you do not just Frenchify “director” into “directeur” but instead you must say “réalisateur”. We’ve watched just one complete film so far—Laurent Cantet’s documentary-esque drama Ressources Humaines—which taught us a lot about French working life and the grève (workers’ strike), which is a thousand times more common here than it is in the U.S. And we’ve just started a second film, which is a kind of comedic, very Marseillais version of a love story, called Marius et Jeannette. It's quirky and funny so far, prompting discussions of the different accent and habit of exaggerated speech in Marseille.
Ruins at Entremont (basic sewer system beneath house)
4) 328: Provencal History and Culture Through its Monuments (French) – As someone who loves history and art and taking tours, there is no way I could do anything but love this class. This prof is a savvy, young, French guy named Guillaume who frequently gets excited when he knows an appropriate English idiom and switches languages just so he can use it. We’ve been studying the Gaulois, the ancient tribes who settled in this region before it was taken over by the Greeks and then the Romans; we toured the little village of Entremont, ruins literally just up the hill from my host mom’s apartment, where we saw ancient stone wine and olive oil pressoirs, ovens for ceramic-making, and the different tactical advantages between Gaulois fortifications and those of the Greeks that conquered them. After our upcoming test, we’re going to talk more about the Romans; there are lots of Roman remains in Aix and in the nearby cities of Marseille and Nice, including amphitheatres, thermal baths, forums, and even the Roman circus where gladiators fought! I’m so excited. It’s so thrilling to have an understanding of what life was like here, where I live—centuries and centuries ago!
Reading aloud in at Park Vendôme
5) ART 370: Creative Nonfiction Writing and the Intercultural Experience (English) – Cathleen, my prof for this course, is the only teacher I have who is American; she came here years ago with the head of IAU’s Marchutz Art program without knowing a word of French, and is raising their children in Aix, now. It makes sense to have an American professor for this course, as it’s all about examining our experience of transplanting ourselves to Aix, smack dab in the middle of a foreign culture. As evidenced by this blog, I rather like to write—though actually, this class is the primary reason why I’ve not been posting extremely regularly here: I write a 2-4 page (minimum) paper after every class period! Right now, we’re in the “generate material” phase of the semester, wherein we’ve done lots of exercises like going to a park and turning our description of it into an extended metaphor, buying and tasting a pastry from the boulangerie and writing about that, and carrying little journals around so we can jot down any images that jump out at us as we go about our days. It all seems a bit forced and pretentious now and then, but then, it’s been my experience that writing is often that way, and I am honestly grateful for the opportunity to document my everyday experiences in this way. I know it’s something I’ll appreciate even more when I am home!
I have each of these classes twice a week. Fortunately, they’re all pretty early in the day, so I have most of my afternoons completely free, which is wonderful. Unlike some of my peers, I wasn’t able to manage Fridays off, but I’m done at noon on Friday, so that isn’t bad at all.
In addition to my IAU courses, I have signed on for two extracurricular classes here in Aix: ballroom dancing (danse de salon) and French cooking! I have taken ballroom for the last two and a half years at PSU, and jazz and ballet classes for the decade or so before that. The biggest difference between ballroom back at home and ballroom here is the fact that here, the focus is on socializing, not on collegiate-level competition. It’s been a little tough getting used to that—the first day of ballroom, the teacher came over to me at the end of class and said to me in heavily accented English, “It is good. But it is—it is flat. It is not loose.” That’s true—my partner and I back home were always proud of how sharp our motions were. So it’s something to work on for me to come at it with a more relaxed perspective—but it is good! I’m lucky that it’s still International Style, which is what I’ve learned; I have a friend here whose experience is in American Style, and it’s been tougher still for her. But I’m excited to work on my cha-cha and my jive, and also add some salsa to my repertoire, and besides my friend and I, the other dancers are a woman from Australia and several young Aixois.
Cooking is also fabulous. The course is taught by an exuberant French chef woman—yes, a little bit like the famous Julia Child—in her own home. Which is great, because it means we get another organic French family home life experience! Ours is a small class, just eight of us—all American or English and studying in all those different study abroad school I wrote about in my last entry. Last week, we learned about cuts of sheep and the special spice blend known as Herbs of Provence (primarily thyme, rosemary, and savory, but also sometimes mixed with lavender, fennel, or basil). We made a mouth-watering roast agneau (lamb) with Provencal ratatouille! And this past class, we made a dish called alouettes sans têtes—I was fooled into thinking this was poultry, as alouettes are little birds, but it turns out that’s just a catchy name for what is actually bacon, garlic, and herbs rolled up into little packages enveloped in boeuf. And our teacher taught us the basics of the different shapes of pasta and how their shapes vary because each shape is more or less conducive to holding different kinds of sauce. My favorite bit of advice from last class: always, always, always finish making the pasta only after everyone has assembled for dinner—“People have to wait for pasta; pasta does not wait for people!”
So there we go! I have so much to learn, and so many ways to improve my French vocabulary, whether it’s political and periodical terminology with Estelle, archaeological terms with Guillaume, film jargon with Muriel, the language of cuisine with my cooking teacher, or words for the body and movement in ballroom dance! There’s no possible way I can master all of it in only one semester, but I’ll do the best I can—and even if it isn’t everything, I know I’ll have learned a ton!
I have each of these classes twice a week. Fortunately, they’re all pretty early in the day, so I have most of my afternoons completely free, which is wonderful. Unlike some of my peers, I wasn’t able to manage Fridays off, but I’m done at noon on Friday, so that isn’t bad at all.
In addition to my IAU courses, I have signed on for two extracurricular classes here in Aix: ballroom dancing (danse de salon) and French cooking! I have taken ballroom for the last two and a half years at PSU, and jazz and ballet classes for the decade or so before that. The biggest difference between ballroom back at home and ballroom here is the fact that here, the focus is on socializing, not on collegiate-level competition. It’s been a little tough getting used to that—the first day of ballroom, the teacher came over to me at the end of class and said to me in heavily accented English, “It is good. But it is—it is flat. It is not loose.” That’s true—my partner and I back home were always proud of how sharp our motions were. So it’s something to work on for me to come at it with a more relaxed perspective—but it is good! I’m lucky that it’s still International Style, which is what I’ve learned; I have a friend here whose experience is in American Style, and it’s been tougher still for her. But I’m excited to work on my cha-cha and my jive, and also add some salsa to my repertoire, and besides my friend and I, the other dancers are a woman from Australia and several young Aixois.
Cooking is also fabulous. The course is taught by an exuberant French chef woman—yes, a little bit like the famous Julia Child—in her own home. Which is great, because it means we get another organic French family home life experience! Ours is a small class, just eight of us—all American or English and studying in all those different study abroad school I wrote about in my last entry. Last week, we learned about cuts of sheep and the special spice blend known as Herbs of Provence (primarily thyme, rosemary, and savory, but also sometimes mixed with lavender, fennel, or basil). We made a mouth-watering roast agneau (lamb) with Provencal ratatouille! And this past class, we made a dish called alouettes sans têtes—I was fooled into thinking this was poultry, as alouettes are little birds, but it turns out that’s just a catchy name for what is actually bacon, garlic, and herbs rolled up into little packages enveloped in boeuf. And our teacher taught us the basics of the different shapes of pasta and how their shapes vary because each shape is more or less conducive to holding different kinds of sauce. My favorite bit of advice from last class: always, always, always finish making the pasta only after everyone has assembled for dinner—“People have to wait for pasta; pasta does not wait for people!”
So there we go! I have so much to learn, and so many ways to improve my French vocabulary, whether it’s political and periodical terminology with Estelle, archaeological terms with Guillaume, film jargon with Muriel, the language of cuisine with my cooking teacher, or words for the body and movement in ballroom dance! There’s no possible way I can master all of it in only one semester, but I’ll do the best I can—and even if it isn’t everything, I know I’ll have learned a ton!
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And here, another fun film surprise: a tour of the main building of IAU!
And here, another fun film surprise: a tour of the main building of IAU!
You will notice that I didn't capture any actual classrooms. Since the student body is so small, we only have five or six classrooms in total, and all of them but two are in different buildings. Two are rented from the Cathédrale de Saint-Sauveur down the street, and there are a few more within a five minute walk from this building.