January 8th Tuesday

I was very excited about my breakfast. I poured my 3 chocolate Meusli cereal from Franprix with great relish. I had reasoned that the fiber and other good things of the cereal counteracted the fact that it had little bits of chocolate in it. Of course I was also pouring in half-creamed milk.

Today was our first day at Sciences Po. We had an orientation that I hoped would give us more information. We miscalculated how far we live from the school building and had to rush to make it on time. We arrived only a few minutes late but the orientation had not begun.

The program director and the professors introduced themselves and the program. The most striking person among them was Astride. She is our person to go for help with anything in the program. She reminded me of an ancient member of the French royal court. Her face was very pale. Her hair was almost the same color and was pulled back in a way that made me think of powdered wigs. Her eyebrows were high and arched. This appearance was offset by her very pleasant and friendly personality as well as the red Chinese-style top that she was wearing.

After the description of our modules, we went around and introduced ourselves. There are students from England, Spain, Germany, and Italy. I’m excited to get to know everyone. There are about a dozen of us in the program. There won’t be any other students in our classes.

After our meeting, we were led around to see the different buildings of Sciences Po. Heidi said that it was exactly as she imagined it, “beautiful but in a state of disrepair.” The buildings are large and impressively formed on the outside. The inside’s impression is what I can best describe as 1970s linoleum. We were able to see the library and other places of importance. Then after this we all went to see Astride at her office. She was rather surprised to see all of us waiting there. She made some copies of a piece of information, gave us our readings, and shooed most of us out the door with it. She was flustered having a group sitting in the tiny lobby in front of her office door. I was able to stay because I needed her to print out a new copy of my acceptance letter. I had forgotten the original at home somehow and that was why the man at the carte de séjour office didn’t recognize the copy of it.

Adrienne and Alberto had waited for me outside. We ran around a little to try to find the rest of the group. Everyone wanted to eat lunch together. We eventually found them in the cafeteria at Sciences Po. I was able to buy a baguette sandwich with ham, lettuce, tomato, hard-boiled egg, and mayonnaise.

We finished lunch and then ventured off toward the student card office. I had to buy the Sciences Po health insurance but I knew about that before. The only thing that was troublesome was that the credit card machine wouldn’t print a receipt. They had made the transaction for €192 and I was afraid they’d send me away with no proof that I’d paid for it. At least five different people came over and tried to fix it. Finally the machine happily chugged out a receipt. They were able to make my student card. I felt like it was a small trophy in my battle against the Homme. I got one of the pieces to the elaborate puzzle.

I started to feel the exhaustion of my sudden cold. After obtaining the card, Adrienne and I walked home. We had to bundle up because the weather was back to being cold and gray.

At home we hastened to create our email accounts at Sciences Po. Now I can be a real nerd and list Sciences Po as my primary network on Facebook. Of course, I should probably delete the part in my profile that states “I love everything French (except the guys).” I also wrote emails to my family and some friends.

For dinner I wanted something brothy to help soothe my throat. I went down to the 8 à Huit and bought some vegetable broth, couscous, and chicken bouillon cubes. I went ahead and heated up some soup to drink while the couscous fluffed up.

During and after dinner, Adrienne and I took a look at the giant book like objects we had gotten at Astride’s office. We had one for each course. They contained photocopies of different texts and compiled our entire reading for the course. We have to read two introductions before class tomorrow. Normally this amount of reading isn’t anything I’d complain about, but I feel sick and would much rather curl up and sleep. I will probably have to stay up late just to finish these introductions.

Overall, I’m quite excited to start my classes here. I enjoyed the presentation of the program. I’m not afraid of writing in French like I was before. The director of the program stressed how important it was to write in French and not take the easy road of English. It validates our language skills to be able to show someone our works written in another language. I also feel that they will understand because many of these professors have had to write in English. The director acknowledged how frustrating it is.

I am looking forward to tomorrow. We’ll have actual classes. I just hope I can get enough of the readings done.