I'm getting bad about writing frequently

Classes are officially in full swing. Last Thursday was my first day, and I was place into the 7th level (the levels are 1-9, 1 being beginning and 9 being fluent) so I was really proud of myself. However, there are definite differences between the American education system and French. I'm very sure that if I were to take 6 credits at MSU rather than getting 6 credits worth of class from this month's institute's classes, the MSU material would be much more challenging and intense than what I am covering right now. The homework varies between level to level from what I can tell, but as far as my work load goes I don't have much homework. Every day I have 3 hours of class in the morning, and then the other classes vary during the week. There's 3 hours a week of phonetics (reeeeally boring for me because I already took some heavy duty linguistic classes at msu), 4 hours a week of a conversation class, and then I have 5 hours a week of optional classes. I'm actually only taking 3 of the hours per week because one of the classes was the one that I took during the whole month of June, so there is no point in my sitting in the same class twice. But the optional classes I have are a literature class and an art history class (which I am really enjoying.)

Other than that, I still have plenty of my other homework to complete in the next two weeks for my professor from MSU, so I'm not complaining about my smaller work load with the institute!

The actual day of Thursday, however, when we all found out our levels, was TRAUMATIZING. I've never had such a chaotic day here as that day. At least 70% of the students in my study abroad groups were up in arms about the level that they were placed in. In their defense, the standardized test that we took was probably graded very subjectively because that is just the way French professors are, however, there was absolute mass pandemonium. Everyone went running to Prof. Norris' and Thao's office, yelling and carrying on and demanding to be put into higher levels because they were bored out of their minds and didn't want to waste MSU tuition on a classes that weren't even going to prepare them. It was all I heard about for at least 3 days. Man. Girls were crying and everything! It was ridiculous.

Then Friday was the 4th of July!! But it just wasn't the same in France. :( we were all really missing hotdogs and burgers and tubing on lakes and hanging out with family and friends and going to see fireworks. Our whole group went and met by the Loire river to celebrate the night. By the river there is a bar that kind of resembles something from Haiti, it's very latin looking and at night they string lights through the trees and have a big dance floor. Unfortunately, the weekend was a big theatre festival in Tours so dancing on the floor the whole night were really bad break dancers/ballroom dancers. Only the French would find a way to somehow connect those two styles together. The music sounded like carnival/circus music, and we all sat there with looks of horror on our face as we watched the dancers stumble around looking absolutely ridiculous. Hahah. Finally, late late late that night, the group got off the stage and then the dj started playing even weirder music, only occasionally playing something normal that we could dance to. All in all, we tried our best to make it feel like an American night.
4th of july

Nothing too much happened on Saturday. I was more preparing myself for Sunday, the Radiohead and Sigur Rós concert!!! It was really a once in a lifetime opportunity for myself, to be able to see two of my absolute favorite groups play at the same music festival, and Lindsey likes both of them as well as another band that played, so we bought tickets and took the train to Arras, France, to go see them play at the Mainsquare festival. The show started at 4pm and we got there just in time and started making our way closer and closer to the stage. The opening bands were really entertaining and fun, and then around 8pm Sigur Rós went on!! I almost cried they were so good. There were so many of them on the stage and they sounded amazing live. I couldn't believe how close we were to the stage, either. Also, they opened their show with my favorite song by them, and then played a lot of other good old and new songs. By the time Radiohead was ready to play, Lindsey and I were literally smushed in the crowd since we were about 5 people away from the front. We definitely got lucky with our spot. They played for 2 hours, and every other song was one from their newest cd, and then the next would be an older song. I was in no way disappointed.
Sigur Rós
the whole Sigur Rós group
Radiohead!!!!!!

a girl standing in front of me had this on her backpack....

The interesting part of the night, however, began AFTER the concert. Since it was on a Sunday, the latest train out of Arras was at 9pm, so we decided that we would just spend the night in the train station until the first train out in the morning. Not a good idea! We soon figured out at 1am that not all train stations in France are open 24/7...and we weren't the only ones camped out all night in the cold rainy weather. The street and area outside of the station was scattered with a bunch of hippies and backpackers who had been at the show as well. We were pacing around the train station complaining about how long the night was going to be until our train at 7am in the morning, when all of a sudden two guys walked up to us and started talking. They asked us where we were from (them being American as well) and we answered Michigan.

"Oh yeah? We're from Michigan, too. We go to Michigan State, actually."

What a coincidence! I never expected to run into MSU students, it was really random, haha. So we walked around and ended up sitting in a bus stop so we could get out of the rain (not only is it very cold in general in France right now, but it is even colder in Arras since the city is so far north) and we sat like homeless people---and by homeless people, for that matter---all night. We chatted and talked about school, they came to France for the weekend from London where they were on a literature study abroad program. Around 2am we were miserable from the cold and lack of sleep, and then somehow the guys were able to fall asleep laying on the cold and wet cobblestone, but Lindsey and I stayed awake and took turns reading each other stories from a short-story book that she had brought. At 2:20am, the short stories were really not that interesting and we walked over to a pay phone booth and sat huddled in it with the doors closed practically on top of each other thinking of people to call and laugh to about our situation. At 3am, we left the pay phone booth and walked around again, looking for hotel lobbies to stand in. At 3:15 am, the concierge kicked us out. At 3:30am, I swear to god I met a reincarnated version of Michael Jackson when he was in his younger black days. 4 am we decided that having a crazy European all night adventure was really not that smart of an idea. At 4:15am we decided to go sit against the outside wall of the train station. 5 am the train station opened and the masses ran inside to get out of the cold. Lindsey and I sat in a corner, really slap-happy, cracking up at how ridiculous the whole night had been and how cold we were. We ended up spooning on the train station floor to conserve body heat, and got an hour or so of sleep and then FINALLY our train arrived.

I've never felt more relieved than I did then to just collapse in a train seat. We immediately passed out for the 2 hour train ride back to Tours. There was a point during the ride when the conductor came by to punch our tickets and had to shake us both awake because we were both laying there nearly comatose and not responding to her. Hahah. We arrived back in Tours at 9:30am and I immediately walked to class from the train station...definitely had some trouble staying awake in class all day. However, it was completely worth it, and really hilarious to look back on.

I had time for a 2 hour nap after class that afternoon, which really turned out to be a 3 hour nap because I over slept my alarm, then I had to hurry over to Jen's host house because it was her 21st birthday and her host mom told her to invite me and Lindsey over for dinner. Finally a salmon-less dinner! I scarfed down all of the food. We had duck with lima beans and at that point anything that wasn't salmon sounded delicious. After dinner we all went out to celebrate her birthday, I opted out on the drinking however because my body was a little worse for wear from the previous all-nighter in the cold, but Jen had a really good birthday so that's what counted. We found a really cool bar that specializes in all these different kinds of shooters, some that were like candy with whipped cream on top, some that were served lit on fire, etc etc.
Jen with the candy shots

Came home late that night and crashed, woke up for school on Tuesday, nothing out of the ordinary. Yesterday we visited the Chenonceau, the castle that is built over the river. As far as castles go, the interesting points of it were that it served as a dividing line of territory between the Germans and the French, and also that you can canoe there! I spent most of the afternoon canoing on the river with Jen, Lindsey, Matt, and Gary. The sun was out, the temperature finally warming up. Hopefully it stays this way so I don't have to keep wearing jeans and sweaters everyday.