Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

Once upon a time, I met a French person. This might sound like a fairy tale because, quite frankly, it is. So far, it’s seemed absolutely impossible to meet the French. You can’t smile at people on the streets. No one talks on the metro. The only contact I’ve had with real live Frenchies has been in one of three contexts: in the classroom, in business (restaurants, my landlords, etc.), and the creepy guys who follow you through the park. Maybe that’s why people think of the French as being so magical – like unicorns, you never really get to interact with them.


Other than a complete lack of les connaissances françaises, things here are going well. I had my first round of classes this week. I think I’ll start with the first class and work my way through chronologically.

Every week, from now until December, starts out with German cinema. I’m not too sure of the professor’s name (since he never actually told us), but he’s intensely adamant about his love of cinema. Our first day, we watched the short(-ish) film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a black-and-white silent film about a doctor, a somnambulist (sleepwalker), and despotism. Quite an intense introduction to an intense class in which the textbook is intensely titled “From Caligari to Hitler: the History of German Cinema.”

Class numero dos (deux) of the week is a comparative literature course on Dante and medieval culture. The prof really knows his Dante, and pretty much everything else about all literature, now that I think about it. It’s quite refreshing after the disaster that was my last year of high school English. We’re mostly focusing on The Inferno, which is actually really interesting in dark, theological, fire-and-brimstone way. I’ve noticed, too, that some of the professor’s favorite anecdotes come from 9/11, and the perversely-appropriate message with which he greeted students shortly before the first tower fell: “Welcome to Hell.”

My third course is an introduction to psychology. I know I already took an AP Psych course in high school (which was fantastic), but a) those credits didn’t transfer and b) Psych-100 came paired with an introduction to drawing as part of the school’s “Firstbridge” course selections. There was no way I was going to take “My Avatar: Robotics and Philosophy.” The prof is fantastically offbeat in an American ex-pat sort of way, and so far, we’ve been covering more of the European perspectives of psychology as opposed to more American behavioral psychology.

Bored yet?

Introduction to drawing will be cool, I think. We actually get to work with nude models (Kendra), which is interesting. To be treated like an adult when it comes to art will be quite a change from painting trees and fruit and other G-rated still lifes.
That pretty much covers all of my courses. Exciting, no? No? I didn’t think so.
I better wrap this up. It’s running a bit long already. What’s going to happen when/if I start having exciting experiences!? I pity your poor souls (and eyes).

Though, for now, I have to go get ready for a midnight party in an aquarium by the Eiffel tower. (I’ll take pictures.)

A domani, and au revoir, mes enfants.