So, now that we're all caught up...

What has been happening in darling little Rennes since break?

Well, I go home in a week. BAM. This whole thing has flownnnnn by. I'm not going to get all sentimental and stuff, because I still have a week left and I'll still be posting. But things are winding up here in Renny Rennes.

Exams have started. I had... Oral Comprehension (which I didn't know about until I walked into the classroom...whoops), Written Expression (easy), and The World of Work (easier than I thought it'd be) last week. Grammar and Convo tomorrow, French Society Tuesday, and Phonetics on Wednesday. I had my translation finals before break... I still don't know what I got yet. I also don't know how to find out what I got, either. I'm just really in a place of oohhhhhhidontreallycare right now. Which, yes, isn't great, but also... I'm here on pass/fail. So what do you expect, really?

Thursday I had a 6 hour break in between my two finals, so I went into town and got lunch and gelato (gelato #3 of the week...) with my friend Clémence. I've found that it's really thanks to all the time that I spend with French people that my French has improved, and not really because of my time spent in class. Here, especially in these past two months, I've been spending considerably more time with French people than with other Americans. I think that that has made a huge difference, and I've seen an exponential improvement that I didn't feel neither earlier in the semester, nor with Spanish in the Dominican Republic (where I spent 90% of my waking hours with other Americans).

Thursday night there was a party for all of us students and our host families- it was the 40th Anniversary of the CIEE program in Rennes (CIEE is the program I'm in Rennes with). It was at a fancy "hotel-spa-restaurant" called Lecoq-Gadby. We didn't have dinner there, just some drinks and hors d'oeuvres. There were a lot of speakers- two of the program directors, an old program director, 2 students, a host family, an old student, and the director of CIREFE (the international program at my university here). And I talked for 2 seconds. I made a photo montage thingy with photos from this semester, and it was shown right at the end.


Me + host fam

It was a nice party, it was cool to meet my friends' host families- this is the first time we've (students/families) been all together since mid-January where we all met for the first time. My two host "brothers" came too, after work, and drew the attention of a good number of my American friends...

Friday I spent some time with a friend from home, Megan, and her roommate, who are spending the next month backpacking around Europe. Afterwards, I went to the end-of-the-year party for CIREFE, which was at PYMs, a nightclub in Rennes. All of my professors were there, which was a bit surprising, but it was a good time.

This next week is going to be full of packing, not studying for exams, eating as much French food as possible, and some au revoirs. I'm assuming I'll blog SOMEwhere in there... making up for the fact that I've failed at blogging regularly during the semester...


Rue St. Michel: high on the list of places I'll miss in Rennes.