la rentrée!!

After a lovely weekend with J here in Val where he made Welsh (a regional speciality), my long holidays were finally over, and it was time to head back to school. I'm now through my first week. Luckily, it was a nice ease in, because my Thursday and Friday classes will start next week.

I guess you could say that it went well. It definitely was busy! sadly, it seems I've forgotten most of my business classes from BW. Besides some very minor odds and ends, it alls seems to have disappeared. I think my finance classes will be a real headache. And French business law will be another doozy.

I have one content class in English (I also have French to English translation which hasn't started yet and English to French translation - yikes!), and I'm going to be very popular. I'm the only one who can keep up with the teacher while taking notes. She's so boring. All she does is dictate her notes to us and expects us to write them down word for word. Several classes are like this though. So different from American universities where you're expected to interact with the teacher! I feel like she could just give us her notes to read. It'd have the same effect! And then maybe, we could talk about them! Anyway, she mispronounces quite a few words so sometimes, even I have no idea what she said (the others got a kick out of that). However, I'm the only one who managed to write down what she said, so I've been sharing my "notes". I don't mind though, because that means if I need help with my notes for another class, I have plenty of people to go to!

I've also started German! I can now say "my name is" and where I come from and some numbers and letters and... that's about it. The owner of my favorite cafe in town is German and now he only speaks German to me (well, mostly). I can order my coffee in German! The people in my German class can't do that!

Other than that, I really like a lot of the people in my class. It's like instant friends! I went out with about 7 or 8 of them last night. Though I was exhausted from my early German class (the others didn't have it), it was good fun. I'm looking forward to getting to know them more.

Tomorrow evening, I'm off to Lille for the weekend. I guess there's no surprise there! We have reservations at a restaurant Saturday afternoon for La Fête Nationale des Restaurants. The meals are buy one get one free! To be fair, we choose the cheapest option (which is still like 27 euros, but we get to split that!), and we've actually already eaten there. But we definitely didn't have a three course meal like we will have this time! It was also the first place we went to eat at as a couple. It's a shame this weekend doesn't happen to be our anniversary!