Sorbonne sketches

I am afraid, dear readers, that my posts are destined to become much fewer than they have been up to now.  As time goes by, those things that were so novel at one time become more routine and less remarkable.  That's not to say there aren't still innumerable little cultural observations to be made.  I could, for example, write a short discourse on the topic of smoking, as it is viewed in France, and I'm sure at some point I shall.

Or perhaps language - it's remarkable the mixtures of languages and dialects that are used to communicate here.  My friend Aida caught me after class yesterday, and it was good to see her again, along with her friend Pili. Aida and I were discussing how much we understood of what happens in class - an ever-increasing amount, though not as much as the French students, I'm sure - and suggesting that we should compare notes and help each other as much as we can.  We speak mostly in French, as all the exchange students do, for it is our only mutual language, but more and more Aida and I inject Spanish into our conversations, for sometimes Aida doesn't know the French word and I recognise the Spanish one, and of course I'm always glad of a chance to practise with a native speaker.  Being from Barcelona she also speaks Catalan, which fascinates me - it's like Spanish and yet not like Spanish, and she occasionally uses a word or two to amuse me.  This is common among my friends - though French and English are the main languages, we insert German, Spanish, Portuguese or any other language as appropriate until we're all speaking some kind of Exchange Student Creole!

I also think I proved to my Miracles teacher yesterday after three weeks that I'm not the dumb fool that I might appear in class.  I tend not to speak for fear of confirming the 'fool' part by my inferior French, and for the most part I have nothing to say anyway, since I don't know the methodologies, the texts or the literary context at all.  At one point yesterday, though, the teacher was encouraging the class to make a connection with a certain passage in the text, and I struggled to explain that I recollected a Bible verse, likely from Matthew, that seemed to relate to the passage in question.  After floundering for a minute it became clear this wasn't the answer the teacher was seeking and I stopped talking.  Instead I pulled out the copy of the New Testament we all have for class and found the verse I was thinking of (Matthew, right enough!) and showed it to her at the end of class.  The strong mutual references to lilies and glory in both the Bible verse and the passage in our text as well as the matching themes of the two seemed to please her with my grasp of intertextuality.  Win for the Australian exchange student!

My new umbrella got a workout today - I went to the 5th half an hour early and took a wander to a cheap shop I remembered seeing there, where I picked up a nice little blue and green fold-up umbrella.  It seems to rain every second day here, which is trying coming from a place where rain is unusual enough to be a novelty, but rain as often as it appears here is more of a trial - one's appearance is constantly disheveled, one's shoes are always soaked and one has a constant feeling of dampness until one can remove their coat and shoes.  The umbrella was a wise choice - sure enough, it began raining during class and I had need of it on the way home.

I'm in the process of planning my next adventures around Europe over the next two months...indeed, my next one starts tomorrow!  I won't say where I'm going, though...I'll save the surprise for the next exciting post from anther exotic location!