We received an email a few days ago from the Midd academic coordinator telling us that French profs would expect us to be familiar with the course material and the books a bit before the course began. I've been reading and re-reading through the course descriptions, and not a single book is mentioned in any of my classes. I hope the Midd classes at least will provide a syllabus and have more structure than the Paris ones, where we've been told to expect a brief course description and a bibliography of 50+ suggested books on the first day. I hope the course description at least tells us what work we have to do...if we have a paper, or presentation, or midterm or all or neither. I think that most French classes have a midterm, final, and one other piece of work (either a oral presentation or a paper). Apparently my translation class has more regular work, and that suits me well, as I'd rather all my classes not be end-heavy as far as work.

I got my initiation into French politics today. The UMP, the center-right party in France who currently holds power, had their convention today for the upcoming elections in April. Lots of ministers and senators and important people in the party gave speeches giving their support to the party's candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. They spent a fair amount of time bashing the left, particularly the socialist candidate, Segolene Royal. I really enjoyed listening to the speeches, both because they were interesting, and because politicians speak slowly and use very proper French, so for the most part I could understand. Politics-wise it's definitely a very cool time to be in Paris, and I'll have to keeping reading the newspapers and such to keep up with the election news. Politics is an extremely popular discussion topic here. I couldn't understand my family very well as they were discussing the speeches, but I'm pretty sure that my host-mom supports Sarkozy and the UMP. My guess would be her husband does too. The only one who clearly opposed Sarkozy was another cousin I met today, who I imagine is around my age as well and lives downstairs. She came over for lunch to visit with Jean, the mysterious son whose shirts have been hanging in my bathroom for a few days and who I finally met today. He was interesting - seemed very much like the only boy. He whined/complained almost the entire time I spent with him. He was hungry, he didn't want to do his chores, he was hungry, he didn't want to do his HW, etc. All of the family seemed a bit annoyed with him and finally at one point during lunch his mother snapped at him. Nonetheless he was very polite to me and seems like a good kid.

My host mom had mentioned a few days ago she would take me to another outdoor market this morning around noon, and when i went to find her, she was still in her pajamas. After she dressed, she told me we were going for a quick tour (all the kids were asking for lunch). She said we'd go to the "Marche des Oiseaux" (Bird Market). I figured this was just the name of some location/market, but it actually was a bird market. There were tons of birds for sale, along with birdhouses, bird food, hamsters, guinea pigs, and lots of other pet toys. It was very cute.

After lunch (delicious as always), I headed out to walk and enjoy the sunshine that had finally arrived. I wandered for a few hours, stopping to shop in a few stores and picking up a few more fashionable (I hope) Parisian clothes. So far all from American chains (Gap, H&M)...hopefully I'll dare to enter some of the French boutiques soon. But for now I'm super content with my purchases.