Lengthy Lunch Lines

                              (The Patio at my First Host Family's House)

School has gotten slightly better these past couple of days. I mostly stay by myself, and now that I know where most of my classes are, I don't have to follow Marion around everywhere. When she and her friends go outside for a smoking break, I go to the library (Mom would be proud!) I'll usually pick up the French National Geographic and flip through a couple articles. I was kind of surprised to find out I had already read one of articles from the French version in New York a few months back. What was kind of interesting, though, was the fact that the French version had just come out (Sept 2011 issue), and they apparently used a hand-me-down article that was a few months old in America! If I discover this is a common occurrence, I will let you know...

Yesterday, I was told to go to the principal's office at 10. When I got there, the office was closed, so I left and came back during my next break after lunch. This time, the principal was there and I sat down across from him and his monstrous desk. It was the most uncomfortable meeting I've had in my whole life! He asked me why I was in his office, and I said I didn't know (I really didn't). After maybe 10 minutes of both of us trying to figure out why I was there, we somehow came to the conclusion that Anne had set up this meeting so I could tell the principal all of my problems from Friday. I was slightly embarrassed when I realized this was the case; I had imagined that I would figure it out all on my own as the year went by, and I knew there wasn't much he could do anyway. I managed to survive the meeting, but it was so awkward!

Today passed pretty slowly, and I was tired from start to finish. It takes a lot of energy to be an exchange student. School was going decently o.k. until lunch. When there are hundreds of students and one tiny lunch line, things can get pretty irritating. I was with a group of people and we were packed in a big room with all the other kids packed in like sardines. It was about a million degrees, and people were constantly pushing and shoving and stepping out of turn, and it was all quite disorganized. The main obstacle to pass is this big room. There is a teacher who shoves a table out of the way for a few people at a time to go up this long staircase and into the cafeteria. When enough people have passed, the table gets shoved back in place, and you have to wait at least another 5-10 minutes. As it turns out, the group of people I was with all got past the moving table, and I was the one who got stuck behind it. They motioned for me to push my way out, and I ended up crawling hands and knees on the floor under the table to get to the staircase. Well - the teacher wasn't too fond of this. He came up and started yelling, but I milked the whole role of "Oh - I'm a foreign exchange student, and I didn't know it was against the rules to crawl under the table to get to the lunch line more quickly." It seemed to work, because he didn't make me go back. By this time, we had 15 minutes to eat before our next class, so I ate as quickly as possible (which compared to other normal people is still incredibly slow).

Now that I mentioned it, that's another thing about France. Everyone warned me how slow people eat, how they really take their time and enjoy conversation and savor their food. However, no one warned me that I would still eat way slower than anyone here. I'm still always the last one done, and even during one of the school lunches, a classmate told me I needed to speed it up. Story of my life.

The rest of the day was pretty normal. I quite enjoy math class: The material is super-easy, especially after a year of AP Calc, so I'm usually one of the first ones done with the classwork. The teacher seems to like me a lot, and it also happens to be a class where I can't do my homework because I don't have a textbook. Oh well! I spent most of today's math class making a pretty fantastic name card. When I got to class and saw that everyone had written their names on a piece of paper so the teacher would know who's who, I decided to make my own. Everyone else's was quite boring, written in pencil or a black pen. I decorated mine festively with block letters, and red, blue, and green flowers, and now mine is definitely the best.

Not much else to say here. I walked home, played the violin, cleaned up my closet after Nella (the cat) used it as a litter-box, and ate dinner with Charlotte and Antoine. Tomorrow, I have swimming, but you need a one-piece bathing suit (another thing I don't have) so maybe I can get out of that one too. Not much else going on here, so I'm out. Thanks for all your support at home; it's made me feel much better about everything!