“How was school today?” “School-like.”

Apparently the way this semester will be working is I am first in a month long language-intensive course with all of the CIEF summer students, and then in early October I will be joining the Université de Bourgogne’s normal students at the beginning of their semester.  I will be leaving about a month before their semester typically ends, so I’m not really sure how all of that is going to work out, but I suppose it’ll all work itself out eventually.   We took a placement test on the first day, and I tested into the 4^th of 5 levels, so I guess my ten years of studying the language are paying off.  There are nine other people in my class, however three of them finished their last day in Dijon on Friday (it seems that the schedule for the summer classes isn’t really set, there are certain days of testing that you can join on and then you can stay as long as you like) so I guess our class is about to get smaller.  I think that the level five class is even smaller, so I am pretty happy with where I tested percentage-wise (I’m guessing there are about 100 students in the program.)  One thing that we did find interesting is that the majority of the English and Arabic speakers seem to have tested into the upper levels, while the lower levels are made up mostly of the Asian students.  I suppose this is because English is so close to French that we have an easier time grasping the majority of the vocabulary, and many Arabic speaking countries also dabble in French.  I do find it interesting though that so many people were willing to come to a foreign country with such a poor grasp of the language.  I feel as if I would be terrified to go into a region where nearly everyone speaks a language that I can’t really understand.  I haven’t decided yet whether or not level 4 really seems fitting for me.  Some students do petition to change levels if they feel that they are in over their heads, or aren’t being challenged enough, but since it is only a month I think I am going to just stay put.  Sometimes I feel as if I am in the right level, as the material does seem to be about what I should be focusing on, specific grammar points and such, however the pace at which the class moves seems really slow to me.  However, I don’t think that I am the only one which feels this way.  One of the English girls is also in my class, and she says that she feels as frustrated as I do by the pace at which the teacher moves.  Maybe this is just typical of French professors, I’m not really sure.