Classes Day Three

Well, the morning passed easily enough, I didn’t have class until the afternoon.  My host parents dropped me off near the tram station and I arrived an hour early for class.  To pass the time, I bought today’s edition of La Monde, a popular French newspaper.  I was able to understand most of the article pretty well, actually.  Also, if you want to blend in while in a foreign country, buy a newspaper.  While carrying it around, I was asked for directions twice in a fifteen minute span.

There was an interesting article about how Gerard Depardieu, the famous French actor, is apparantly causing an interanational scandal between France and Russia.  The actor said that he doesn't want to live in France any more because he felt that the new Socialist government was going to enact too high of taxes, so he went to Russia, where Putin gave him a Russian passport.  It's all really bizzare and incredibly French.

I waited around outside the entrance to the auditorium where my first course was to be held.  I waited for twenty minutes past the listed starting time.  Nobody showed up.  When I say nobody, I mean neither students nor professor.  The auditorium was dark.  I was in the right place, but nobody else seemed to know it.  Tomorrow I’m going to inquire with the Bureau of Minnesota to see if they can determine if the location was changed.

The other class went well enough.  It was the larger lecture version of my history of the region course.  Today we focused on the history of wine in the region, detailing the geography and Roman roots of the wine trade.  Some of it went over my head, but I am going to try and catch up with what I missed later this week at the city library, which apparently is one of the best in the region owing to the fact that Montpellier has been a university town for over half a millennium.