Adventures in Nantes: Transitioning from tourist to student

The last week or so before classes started, I spent most of my free time exploring Nantes with the other students in my program. I live about 15 minutes by bus from the city center, so I’ve gotten quiet comfortable with the public transit system. It’s even more complicated than I originally thought since the bus schedule and route change at night and on weekends, but I’m catching on. Turns out Nantes is a really cool place to live. It’s not so big that I’ll get lost for hours, but not so small that I’ll get bored of it either. There are so many interesting buildings, delicious eateries, and enticing shops.

Movie theatre

Passage Pommeraye, home of the most expensive stores in Nantes

Église Sainte-Croix

Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul

Saint-Donatien (just before sunset), the chuch right by my bus-stop

Livin' the Nantes life

Yesterday I had my first day of classes, and it was actually really great to be back in academic-mode. I had a French language and composition class in the morning (at the IES center) and Translation (at the University of Nantes) & French Romanticism (back at IES) in the afternoon. The translation class (Traduction) was the most interesting because it’s at the fac with French university students, not just American abroad students like my other classes. I would say about 50% of the class are French students, 30% are American, and 20% are from England. For the first hour of the class, we worked on translating French text into English, and during the second hour we translated English into French. It’s really interesting to hear the professor explain idioms and intricacies of the English language to the French students. A phrase we read in the English text (from Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book?) that we spent a bit of time on was “…[the book] usually had bits of banana, biscuit and the odd pea squashed between the pages.” The francophones had a difficult time understanding the meaning of “odd” in the sentence as it doesn’t fit into the most common definitions. It’s nice to see they have some trouble with our language too, not just the other way around.

Today I had French Romanticism again at 8h45 and then right after I had Religion, Society, and the State in Modern France, which I hope will be considerably more interesting than today’s class would have me believe. Rock climbing class is on Wednesday afternoons, so I hope to start participating in that next week. I went home for a bit after classes to chat with my host family and take a nap, then headed back to IES for Conversation Club, a group for American and French students to meet and talk with one another. We speak in French for the first half and English for the second half, so it’s a good opportunity for both parties to practice the other language and learn whatever slang phrases the kids are using these days. The small group I was in had one French student and three Americans (then one left early). I found out later most groups just talked about school and club/bar preferences, but Jose, Meghan, our new friend Solene, and I had a nice discussion about economics, politics, and culture in the European Union and United States. I’m already looking forward to Conversation Club next week.

I’m signed up for a class called French 19^th and 20^th Century Art that is supposed to start tomorrow, but the professor isn’t feeling well. As a consequence, that class is canceled for the week and I don’t have my first class tomorrow until 13h45!

You probably can't read this, but it's my weekly class schedule.
The yellow parts are optional phys. ed. courses, not weekly commitments.

Oh, and I took some more pictures of the inside of my host family’s house if any of you are interested in seeing what the home looks like beyond my bedroom.