After a week of class, I feel noticeably more confident in my time here in France. The language interactions are still awkward and stunted, even with my host family. That being said, my capacity to understand native French has increased. My capacity to speak French has increased (marginally). Classes are not nearly as daunting as they were on Monday. Today (Thursday) I only had one class: Romantisme. As you can guess, that means Romanticism in French. Our Romantisme class is split up into Tuesday's and Thursday's. Each Tuesday, we meet for 90 minutes and discuss the Romantisme movement in France - paintings, writings, sculptures. Each Thursday, we go to a different museum in France and see Romantisme. It's quite an amazing opportunity. This morning we met at the Louvre to look at neoclassic work by Italian artists. Neoclassicism was the precursor to Romanticism. It featured geometric lines, throwbacks to Greek and Roman life, and dramatic fresco-like scenes.
So that was today. I'll just add that I'm taking a class called "Tourism and Gastronomy", which is probably the best decision I've ever made. Some of the assignments on my syllabus include "Visit the Museum of Chocolate", "Visit the Salon of Wine and try a bottle", and "Learn about French cheeses". So yeah, things are going pretty well here. We're going out tonight around Montparnasse, which is the south part of Paris. Then I have some friends visiting from around Europe for the weekend.
A bientot!
Noah
