The Time Difference

Okay, so we all know that there is a serious time difference between the United States and France. Specifically, from the East Coast the difference is 6 hours. But that just means that when it's noon here, it's 6am at home. It doesn't mean that France's 6pm is equal to Indiana's 6pm. Because it's not.

Basically, one of the weird things to get used to is how differently parts of the day are labelled. In the United States, it's not odd for a restaurant to start serving lunch at about 11am. Here, lunch usually starts about 1pm (or 13h, as the French say). There are some restaurants that open at noon, but the restaurants don't get busy until about 1. Lunch lasts about two hours, but can easily be stretched into three if you really want it to.

And then there's afternoon tea. Restaurants here are really specialized. It's pretty common to find a restaurant that only serves lunch until a certain time and then they become a tea and coffee shop until they close at 5 or 6pm. You come in, sit down, and the waiter almost immediately will come up to you and ask for your order. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask for a menu at one of these places before, but you can find them inside if you look for them.

Honestly, it was a little frustrating at first because most restaurants don't advertise if and when they serve dinner. So I was really surprised when I (finally) figured out that most restaurants don't even open for dinner until about 7. Typically, people don't even start showing up to the restaurants until about 8. The restaurants will then close anywhere between 11 and midnight, and usually it's closer to the latter.

It's really funny because a lot of the program students have to sometimes rearrange our schedules around our family dinners each week. Occasionally, this will include rearranging/skipping some of our program classes. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I haven't yet!) When discussing the situation with our theater teacher, he asks us what time we usually arrive at our families' homes, and when we respond with 6:30pm, his response is either "Waaooh!" or "Oh, la." because he thinks that we start eating as soon as we arrive. But don't worry, our families are thoroughly French. The earliest I have ever had a meal start is 7pm.

In other news, this week happens to be my favorite week of the entire year for several reasons, as follows:
1) In the US, it's usually only a two or three day school week. Here, I'm not so fortunate, but it's okay because I'm living in France. So I won't complain.
2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is coming out in the theaters here on Wednesday. Of course, I'm going to see it, silly goose! Also, on the flip side, it's already out everywhere else in the world. Lucky for me, the internet is a wonderful thing, so I've already seen it--sort of. It was kind of a terrible version where most of the screen was just black, but I could at least figure out what was going on. And anyway, I'm not going to feel guilty about it because I'm going to see it in theaters several times anyway. But this week, I'm only going to have the opportunity to see the movie dubbed in French. You're probably not aware of this, but a lot of the major names in the Harry Potter world are not the same in French as they are in English. For example, Hogwarts is Poudlards. I know. I don't understand it either.
3) Black Friday. I love my electronic deals.
4) The official beginning of Christmas season.
5) The beginning of Advent!
6) THANKSGIVING. Love, love, love this holiday. It usually means my favorite foods and my favorite people and playing cards and generally just feeling warm and fuzzy and loved.
7) My birthday! Who doesn't love birthdays?

So you all better have a fantastic week, too, because it's going to be awesome!

Finalement... Internet in my apartment

You should all be very, very proud of me. I successfully installed our internet by following instructions in French--and by myself, I might add. So we now have internet in our apartment! It's also sort of extra special because we're the first program kids to have internet in our apartment because everybody else either went to the internet/phone store after we did, or they asked for a person to come out and install it for them. Well, not me. I can do it myself!

In other news, the program had us start looking at classes for our schedules because we can start scheduling classes next week. The only problem is, it's the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. French schools, apparently, only have a student body because it's free. Because nobody in their right mind would knowingly pay to have to go through the entire school website just to find a single class that they want to take.

Okay. Let me back up and explain a little.

So. This is me having an open mind. Ahem. French schools are not set up the same way American ones are. Schooling is free in France, so long as you go to a public school. Universities are included in this until you get to the Grands Ecoles, which are sort of like the French Ivy League. The schools aren't organized as an overall school--that's just for the classrooms--but are instead organized according to department. That all sounds reasonable so far, right? I agree. However. (You knew it was coming, don't be surprised.) The departments act as individual entities when it comes to scheduling. So to find a class list (if you're lucky enough to have it in a complete list), you have to go to each individual department's webpage. But as each department is its own entity, there is no rule as to when the class lists are updated or where the classes will be found on the department website.

Can you understand why I'm getting frustrated? Oh, America. You do so many organizational things right.

So far, I've found the Linguistics deparment's website and class list--for last year.

I'm not a happy camper right now.

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I'm updating this as I'm preparing for what is to be my third dinner party in my apartment here in Aix. It's so great! There are going to be seven of us total. It was going to be eight, but someone dropped out on us at the last minute. The menu: Salt & Pepper Chicken with a Mexican Rice/Bean sauce, the necessary baguette and Camembert (cheese, for those non-gourmands out there, but oh-so delicious cheese), Pain au Chocolat, and two different varieties of wine. I'm getting so excited, especially because I'm coming to appreciate how well our apartment is placed in the city.

Oh! And for those of you who haven't seen, I posted two links (so far) to my pictures of St. Tropez and Marseille. More to come of other adventures in France!