Last week

It has been exactly a week since the last post so i will start with last thursday and see how far i get.

Thursday: 8 am course "Technical Analysis of Film" -It sounds better in french "L'analyse technique du Film". the first thing to note is the time that this course was at- 8 am is one thing at middlebury where i can usually make it to bihall in 3 minutes- I had to leave the apartment at 7am which due to it being France or maybe just the time of year means it's still dark outside. Parisians seem to go to work at around 10 am- so 8 is really just pushing things in my opinion. This all would have been bad enough but i also managed to not correctly set my alarm- so after a fairly confusing dream wherein i ultimatley was convinced that i was back in my bed in good old Westminster, VT I awoke, after 7, in Paris- very distinctly not in my bed at home- and with a quick realisation that i was going to be late.

I literally ran to the subway- I've never done this before- mainly because running is not something often done by Parisians- mainly because there shoes are quite uncomfortable, but also just because it would mess up their make up and hair and generally contrast with their pulled together appearance. But run I did- and managed to impressively make it to Paris III in 45 minutes, only 10 minutes late. And thanks to the incompetance of first year french students i was by far not the latest in the course.

French first year university students are an interesting breed. I can't remember the exact number but we were told in our course at Middlebury that about half of the students in their first semester will fail out. But I suppose one has to look at this in the context of the fact that university is practically free for all students who have passed their "Bac" and the university is probably fairly underfunded. This basically means that almost everyone who finishes their Bac in France enters into the university and it just so happens that half of them become disenchanted with the education system and discover that their true passion is writing tormented poems or watching the registers at the local Monoprix- this would explain the plethera of tormented writers and "Monop's".

So the second thing to note in the tale of this course is the subject- I think someone asked me why i was taking film courses- actually many people have asked me this. And just to succinctly answer the question : I have no idea. The longer version starts back when an optomistic wide-eyed freshman decided to take French at a very internationally minded liberal-arts college in the middle of nowhere, VT. This somehow unexplicably led to the same person signing up for a semester abroad and then, ultimatly finding herself in Paris with the option of taking either Literature or Cinema courses- and having already taken French literature courses she decided to go with the later.

That being said I don't really view the cinema courses as just "film classes" - one of them is basically a philosophical art history type course (L'esthetique de l'image)- I like this course very much. The Woody allen one i generally see as an interesting view on America. And the Technical Analysis of film- ok.. that's very film-esque- But you also learn a lot about how there are different ways to view everything. Every shot, every sound has been placed there intentionally- And you start to see how movement and color and pace and light can all affect the way something is expressed... That being said i have no intention of ever studying film further after this semester- nor have i ever held more than a passing interest in Films.

So after arriving, post cross- city sprinting - we watched a scene from Edward Scissorhands and talked about each shot and the girl sitting next to me proceded to fall asleep.

Friday: midd course in the morning followed by Woody allen in the afternoon- I had my first encounter with other middlebury students at Paris III - After a week of meekly smiling at all the french students about me, it was very nice to run into familiar faces. After the course i attempted to find an open book store, but instead ended up just taking the subway to various places and eventually giving up and going home to pack for the trip.

to be continued...