For those of you who don't know, I signed up for a month long course to improve my French through an international language program known as EF. I stayed in a home stay family, who were very kind to me. The only issue I had was that I had a VERY long commute every day from Versailles where I lived, into Paris. Try an hour and a quarter each way. So I spent about 2 and a half hours a day on the metro and/or the train. Lots of staring out the window and listening to music. At least in that time I believe I became convincingly Parisian, right down to buying high heeled black boots and dressing only in black and grey.
Monday through Friday I would have around 20 hours of class. That may not sound like it, but try waking up Wednesday morning and having to have class in French for 6 hours. It wasn't all grammar and vocabulary though, we actually had some really cool classes. I was in French acting for a week, which was fun and incredibly challenging. We had to improve scenes in French, one particularly memorable exercise being to re-enact the Jerry Springer show. We also had Cuisine, where we learned to cook French food. Honestly there wasn't a whole lot of French spoken in that class! But we all had a good time.
So I met some really nice people, I now know people who live from Finland to Venezuela. About halfway through the course there was a school organized trip to Amsterdam, which some of my friends and I decided would be fun to go on. So we all met at like, 11pm Friday at the metro stop we were supposed to take a coach from. There were about eight people going on the trip. The coach didn't actually arrive until 1am. So we all pile into the incredibly squished bus. It actually took us no less than 12 hours to get there, because we think the bus was slightly broken. We got in around 11am and none of us had slept a whole lot, as the bus was both noisy and cold. But we are in Amsterdam and excited to be there. After getting some food we went to the house of Anne Frank. It was really interesting to see the place. I bought the book while there and finished it the next couple weeks. It was all the more meaningful after actually being to the house where the whole thing took place.
Next we hit up the Heineken brewery. The whole thing is set up so you follow how the beer is made from start to finish. This includes a room that virtually simulates the process. A bunch of you stand on a platform and 'experience' it. This includes heat, water and the platform moving about. Regardless of cheesiness, a good time was definitely had by all.
That evening we all went out and walked around the famous red-light district. There are a lot of things that make Amsterdam a very different place then other capital cities in Europe. For one, marijuana is legal. For another, prostitution is a recognized career. That is why the red-light district is so well known. Basically there is a street down the canal that is lined with houses which have large windows. And in them girls stand, practically naked, for guys to come by and...choose. Oh and if you go, don't take pictures as the pimps will yell at you.
So after a somewhat eventful night we all got up exhausted and went to Van Gogh museum. It was pretty awesome because there were so many of the original paintings there, like the famous ones too. I think however most of us would have enjoyed it more if we weren't so tired! We went to the Hard Rock cafe for lunch which we all enjoyed immensely and then we took a canal cruise. It was a good cruise, but unfortunately many of us were so happy to be in somewhere warm and comfortable that they fell asleep. That pretty well brings are weekend in Amsterdam to a close. We got back into Paris at about 3am on Monday morning, tired and most of us with colds. Needless to say I was not in class that day.
The rest of my course falls into a sort of comfortable routine, where most weekends were spent at Galeries La fayette and most Friday nights were spent taking advantage of free admission at the Louvre. My French improved a lot, and I met some really great people. I also had a lot of fun! It was a good break from the constant moving around, and it was nice to have some sort of routine in place, at least for a bit. I feel like I absorbed the culture and that was a major motivation for going on this trip in the first place.
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