First Day of School

I am officially a French language student at Campus Langues in Paris! 

 

 

This morning I woke up at 7:00am, which is the earliest I have woken up since I arrived in France, but I didn’t mind. I was so ready to go to school! I had my bag packed and my outfit waiting for me on the windowsill and nothing could ruin my happy happy first day of school mood. I took a nice warm shower and had some tea and toast before heading off to the Metro at 8:00. According to the website I use to find the quickest Metro routes, it should only take me about 35 minutes to get to the school, but I have myself an hour because I really didn’t want to be late. 

When I walked down the stairs to the Metro, I was surprised to see a huge crowd waiting for the train. Usually there are like 20 peole at the Les Agnettes stop that is so close to my home, but today there were at least 200. I was lucky when the next train came that I happened to be standing in a particular swarm of very eager people and I was pretty much shoved onto the even more crowded train. There was NO space. I couldn’t move my arms and the man standing behind me had the hiccups and I could literally feel every single one of them rolling up his throat. When I was little, I remember looking at the “Maximum Occupancy” signs in buildings and thinking “no way, I am sure that more people could fit in here if they just smooshed together a little bit!” Well, I have a new appreciation for maximum occupancies because this Metro needed one and it needed to be about half the amount of people who were on that train.  The train moved much more slowly because of all the people, and it took forever at each stop because there was always some person trying to fit on the train that wouldn’t let the door closed so we just had to wait for them to give up before we could move on. I began to wonder and worry about the time, I was able to wriggle my phone out of my pocket, and I saw that it was already 8:40! I hadn’t even changed trains which meant I wasn’t even half way there! About 10 minutes later, we arrived at my stop that’s when I ran into a problem. I started trying to get off the train, but noboy was moving out of the way. I began to panick because I realized that the doors would close in under a minute, and I didn’t know what to do because nobody would move out of the way. I tried to speak louder, but everyone was being loud on the train and I couldn’t remember what to say in French  and then the doors were closing and I was still crushed between people on the train. It would be about three or four minutes until the next stop, so I took a breath and told myself that all I could do in that moment was get off the train and find a new way to school. When the train stopped again, I was not nice. I pushed and yelled and made myself noticable and people listened to me and I got off the train! I ran to a map and found another train that could take me to the other train that I needed to arrive at school. It was after 9:00, so I decided my new goal would be 9:30 hahah. An hour and a half of school is better than no school at all! I wasn’t going to let these silly trains ruin my day, and I decided not to worry over all the traffic problems I couldn’t really do anythig about. When I got to the Metro station near my school, I ran as fast as I could down the streets I remembered Cecile showing me when we went to get me inscripted. I burst through the front doors and in out of breath, broken French, I asked the receptionist where my class was. She kindly laughed (I think she could tell it was my first day) and pointed down the hallway to a room. The classroom door was open, and the teacher, Michelle, was speaking to a class of people who looked like they were happy to be there. I stood kind of awkwardly in the doorway for a second and all the students saw me before the teacher did. The other students were from all around the world, and they had friendly faces but I realized I was definitely the youngest. When the teacher saw me, I smiled and kind of giggled and just said “bonjour!” and she and the rest of the class laughed and Michelle showed me to a seat in the front of the room. 

The class was taught only in French, but I understood everything! Being here for a month has really taught me how to understand, but now I want to learn how to speak. The class is for beginners, so it is all pretty basic, but still it felt so good to be in a classroom learning! I soon learned that there were students from Brasil, Spain, Venezuela, Colombia, India, Syria, China, Poland, Great Britain, and of course, the US! There are only 18 students in the class, but we all come from so many different places and I think that is wonderful. Class went by really fast, and the Metro ride home went a lot more smoothly than it did in the morning. I am so glad that I will get to go to this school every day! I just wish it was longer hahaha. I want to learn French as fast as I can and remember it for the rest of my life. 

So this post was really just to tell you that I had my first day of school and it was complicated and amazing and I can’t wait for tomorrow! :)