"I don't think I know you..."

This is a story about how I ended up totally out of place speaking Spanish in a French classroom with a professor who would only address me in English.

Over the past week, everyone in the group has been choosing/signing up for classes. For the most part, we sign up for classes through CIREFE- the part of the university just for foreigners. We do, however, have the option to take classes with French students if we place into a high enough level. After planning out my schedule, I saw that I was only taking 17 credits (heh) and decided that I wanted to add another class.

The longer I spend in France speaking French, the more I realize how much I miss Spanish. French was my first foreign language and is still and always will be my favorite, blah blah blah, but I really did enjoy speaking Spanish this past fall. Sorry, I digress. Anyway, I decided to take a Spanish class. There are a couple other Hispanophiles (yes, that is a word) in my group, and Monday afternoon another girl and I went to check out the course listings in the Spanish department.

And we found the [potentially] best. class. ever.
It was a translation class- which sounds fun enough as is. And it involved Spanish. And French. Yes, a two-part translation course: French -> Spanish, and Spanish -> French. No English involved at ALL. I had a huge moment of language-geekness and pretty much died on the spot.

We didn't sign up right away- we decided to check out the class first. Smart us.

The first part of the class was Tuesday afternoon- it was the Spanish -> French section. We got there early, sat way over to the side of the room, and hoped to blend in. People keep arriving, but no professor. We had hoped to talk to him/her before class started, but when he finally walked in, he started class right away. Everyone whipped out packets of Spanish lit. and they continued translating where they left off the previous week. In French.

It was kind of boring, not having the texts... and also kind of disconcerting, listening to the uber uber uber formal translating all the students were doing. I guess I was (naïvely) expecting them to be translating like novels or newspaper articles or something (yeah... now that I think about it, that was kind of dumb of me). They were using the passé simple (old French literary tense which I know how to use, I just don't like actually thinking about it) as well as really archaic words that even the French students were kind of shakey with.

After halfway through the class, the professor turns to us to ask us to translate the next part... then he kind of does a double take... "Je crois que je ne vous connais pas..." "I don't think I know you... "

My first instinct is to start rambling in Spanish, God knows why, and he looks at us funny and asks us where we're from. Los Estados Unidos. He then starts speaking English. Like... no. Just no. We're in a French/Spanish translation class, why the heck is English even an option?

Anyway, we sat through the rest of the class, and went up at the end to talk to him. I can't remember the exact order of the languages spoken, but I do know that we hit all three and the conversation ended with him speaking English with us. Just English. Sigh.


Molé
So yeah, I'm not planning on taking the class now. I really just wanted an opportunity to speak Spanish while I'm here- and considering the class is conducted in French... it wouldn't be that useful. I did see a nice Mexican restaurant in town though, so maybe I'll hit it up for some molé and a bit of práctica.