Fall is Back

Fall is back again. I definitely brought the Floridian weather back with me because we had two weeks of 80 degree weather and nothing but sun. Unfortunately that came to end this weekend. It is back to being cold and rainy here in Compiègne. I have not seen the sun in three days; its quite depressing. Fall is not the same as it is in Rhode Island. There is no Scituate Art Festival here, no apple picking or pumpkin picking, and most importantly, no meat pie for Dad's birthday! Seeing as there are only five trees in all of Compiègne, I have not seen too much foliage which is also quite triste (sad). 

It has finally hit me that school has begun. I would rather be out exploring, but sometimes you just need to buckle down and do work. So far my classes are not too bad. I am taking German as you know if you read my earlier blog and that is probably my favorite class. Scratch that, it is my favorite class! It is getting a little harder now though. My French class is going okay. I am giving a presentation this week with two other people on non-verbal communication. Thank you COM 100 for having me write that analysis on non-verbal communication. Never thought I would be saying COM 100 was worth it, but I guess that is why we shouldn't say never. My composite materials class is hard, but its okay. Stephan and I are lab partners and we made composite fiber plaques last lab. This week we are going to be doing some testing on the plaques we made. Learning about the European Union for three hours in a row and right after lunch is so long and so boring. It is also hard to stay awake because you have just eaten too. We as a class struggle through it. Some of my Spanish speaking friends are in that class as well as a few Americans so that's good.

A few things I noticed in my classes. All the French students take out their pencil pouches, notebooks with a thousand lines, literally, and then pay full attention for the entire class. Also, classes are an hour and a half at the minimum. I thought 50 min was a long time, boy was I wrong. Stephan and I have come to the conclusion that we are going to have awesome attention spans in class when we get back. Enough about me, back to the students. They all take out their red, blue, and black pens, and a pencil, oh and a ruler. Then they always write in pen and always in cursive, even for engineering classes. If we do an example with a figure, they draw the figure in pencil.  That is the only time they ever use pencil. They use their ruler to make sure the 3-d square or whatever they are drawing is exact. Come on people. They use their ruler to underline the title of their page too. The different colored pens are used for making their notes neat and organized so they can distinguish between this or that. I still haven't figured out their decoding yet, but I am working on it. By the way, no one even looks at their phone during class either. This is not just one or two kids, this is everyone. It is so bizarre. The French are way more strict about note taking than we are.

Just a few observations that I have made since being in class. Also, I can tell which students are French by their backpack too. I would say 2/3rd of the French students at UTC have eastpack backpacks. It is the oddest thing I have ever seen. I guess it would be like walking around campus and seeing NorthFace everywhere, but worse!