Day 31: L'Université d'Avignon/Avignon University

Today I only had one class at the Institute - Literature, which went fine as usual. Nothing too exciting to elaborate on. It was class as normal. Then after that I ate my lunch of a chevre cheese, ham, pesto, and herb mustard sandwich, and some snacks.

I departed from the Institute at 13h30 for my class at 14h00. This half hour included getting to class 5 minutes early, finding the classroom, and the potential for getting lost on the way to the university. All of these provisions ended up being necessary. My classroom number was "0E14 TD" which means level 0 (ground floor), East side, room 14, discussion room. I wandered a little off course on my way to the university but managed to find my way back without any major issue.

I got to the classroom after walking by it (it was the first one on the hallway, which I didn't expect). Then, no one was there...I was the only one, and I was only about 5 minutes early. I booked it up to the 2nd floor where the class listings and room numbers are posted to confirm that the room hadn't been changed. It hadn't. I hoofed it back downstairs with about 1 minute left before the class was supposed to start.

Outside of the classroom there were two students also waiting for the same class. I overheard then talking and they were speaking English! So due to my frazzled state and excitement to be able to easily and unembarrassingly ask them if they knew what was going on, I went up to them and was like "You speak English!". Oh geez! They were both Brits and are studying through the Erasmus EU exchange program. In the course of about 2 minutes about 8 more Brits showed up. They came to the consensus that the class had been cancelled and went to confirm on the bulletin board what day the class was supposed to start.

While up confirming the schedule, I ran into another student from my Institute. She and I chatted, and we are both going to check out a class on Thursday. She and I walked back to the Institute, because I had about an hour until my next class and hadn't brought anything with me to occupy my time.

I then later returned to the University to observe a class that was meeting at 15h30. I got there and the same thing transpired - minus all the Brits and there being other people there in general. I went upstairs to the bulletin board to confirm what I thought I'd checked earlier (that the class was supposed to start today) and realized that it was the same professor who was teaching both classes. Therefore, it would make sense that if he was not there for one, he would not be there for the second. All in all, I spent over an hour trekking to and from the University and sitting and waiting for classes to start that weren't actually happening.

For dinner we had avocado, fish, and mixed vegetables (potatoes, carrots, and peas). We then watched a film on tv (which I don't know the name of) that was very funny. For once, I recognized a French actor, and confirmed with Claudie, that he had been in the movie of Cyrano de Bergerac. That was kind of cool that I recognized him. I don't normally have any idea about actors in general, so this was a pretty big deal for me.

After that film, there was some kind of talk show on about the new movie Ghost Whisperers or something like that with Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. PS: who knew that Ewan McGregor could perfectly understand native French speakers and that he can speak some french himself. Fun fact!

I hope the weather gets nicer. I know back in the States many of you have been flooded with snow. Here we've just been getting rain. It makes things kind of gloomy, but as long as they clear up before I leave for my trip on Friday I'll be happy.

Ciao!