M’éclater

I feel like two heavy weights have been lifted from my shoulders.

En premier temps [First of all] I completed my exam this morning without dying, passing out or crying (all of which were possibilities).

To celebrate its completion and the end of the school week, my friend Rebecca and I decided de flâner [to stroll aimlessly but observantly] around the Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain-des-Près areas. It’s cheap entertainment and I am a flâneuse at heart. Also, I wrote in my JYA admissions essay that one of the reasons I wanted to go to Paris was pour flâner ses rues. Donc, je réalise ce rêve [So, I’m living my dream].

En deuxième temps [secondly] I have also successfully finished making travel plans for Christmas Break.

As many of you know, my brother, Ben, will be coming to visit me for nearly three weeks at the end of December. During this time we will complete a whirlwind tour of some of Europe’s hotspots – and by hotspots I actually mean coldspots because I anticipate that these cities will all be nice and nippy – spending three nights each in Amsterdam, Prague and Vienna. Now that all the travel arrangements have been made, I’m no longer stressed and simply look forward to being a tourist and relaxing.

One final thing to celebrate: I am no longer an illegal alien! Since my temporary visa expired at the end of October, I had technically been living as a semi-illegal resident. Sure, it was a pretty posh life for a sans-papiers, but still a big gênant [annoying] since I couldn’t leave the country. Titre de séjour and chest x-ray in hand, I am now a legitimate Parisian resident.

3 heures, 1 examen

I am, right now, en train d’étudier [in the process of studying] for my first real French exam. The exam is tomorrow morning and I’m not too sure that I’m properly prepared, but I somehow am maintaining the nonchalance of someone who was either extremely knowledgeable about post-colonial film or actually spoke French.

I am neither.

The professor has kindly allowed me, the only foreign student in the third-year cinema course, to, in lieu of writing out the whole dissertation on the subject she will give us, complete a très détaillé [very detailed] outline. A reasonable suggestion, except when you consider how crazy the French are when it comes to essay organization. My English essays, although often unorganized, get by thanks to a fairly crafty manipulation of words that somehow dazzles professors and makes them believe that I’ve actually said something logical and A-worthy.

This strategy does not work in my pathetic French. What’s more, the French would never be tricked by clever turns of phrases the way my American professors are. They want structure, they want organization and they want neatness. Everything else is secondary.

So with dictionary, double-copy paper, white out and pen in hand, I will set off at the break of dawn tomorrow morning to embark on the quest of a lifetime that is my first French exam.

19 colonial and post-colonial films, 2 wars in Indochine, 3 hours, 1 exam.