Bonjour Encore

Ok, quick response to a question I recieved... If you wanted to send a letter I don't actually know how much it would cost... thought the US Postal Service website says that Air Mail post for a letter is $0.80 so like three stamps worth... or you can go to the post office and just pay your 80 cents.

On to other things:
I’m attending the CUEF while I’m here. That stands for Centre Universitaire d’Études Française, esentially the Center for French Studies. It’s part of Stendhal University in Grenoble. It’s only for international students to learn about French language and culture so it’s nice knowing that the people there don’t speak French as a first language either and you’re all suffering through together. Classes are small for the grammar classes, which are just your proficiency level (a single number between 20 and 35) but the electives can be as big as probably 150 because some are open to everyone enrolled. We were given a list based on our level of electives available and we were able to choose which ones we wanted. It was only required that we take 4 electives, our required grammar courses and then chooses either Vocabulary or Translation. We didn’t have to register or sign up or anything, you just go to the classes that you chose. It’s acutally kind of a nice system because for the first week you can go to all the electives if you want and choose the one you like. Anyway… here’s what my schedule ended up looking like:

Lundi (Mon): 10:40 – 12:30 Grammaire
14:00 – 15:30 Littérature du XXè siècle
Mardi (Tues) : 10:40 – 12:30 Techniques
Mercredi (Wed): 8:30 – 10:20 Grammaire
16:00 – 17:30 Histoire de l’Art
Jeudi (Thurs): 8:30 – 10:20 Grammaire
13:30 – 15:30 Traduction d’Anglais
15:30 – 18:30 Histoire du cinéma français

It’s really not a bad schedule. Tuesdays are mostly free and I don’t have any classes on Fridays so I can leave Thursdays for weekend travelling! Three hours of cinema class is hard to get through, but my good friends M & M are certainly helping the situation. I was really expecting the teachers to be hard core, but they aren’t at all. They really seem to care about us understanding them and they want us to learn as much as we can. They know frustrations can run high, and they try and keep the curriculum as interesting as they can. All in all I really like the program. There are times I wish we were with French students though, so we could meet some real French people, but there are other times when it’s nice to know everyone’s in the same boat as you. I’ll try and be a totally dorky tourist and take some pictures of the school sometime for all of you.