Back to school

So my classes in French officially began on October 1st. I have a visitation class Mondays from 12-1:30ish where we meet at different locations around Paris and learn about them/ discuss them. Then I have another class that meets Tuesday/Friday from 1-3:15. This is my language/grammar/vocabulary class and it's the longest of my life.

I took a written test in French and then had to go take a quick little oral test. My written French is apparently at a much higher level than my speaking French which is apparently troubling for all involved.

I was placed in a class a little below my level to hopefully help me improve my speaking. Here is what I believe to be the problem: when I speak, even in English, I speak really fast. In order to try to keep up with the French, I just go. I could talk non stop for 10 minutes but none of the verbs would be conjugated correctly and my pronouns would be misplaced. When I write, I have time to write out verbs, spell them correctly, make them agree where they are supposed to and all the things you're supposed to do, however I still make faults. This is typical. French is tricky.

So the woman giving me the test told me that after the first 10 weeks I can switch to a higher level. Cool. I go to my own class.

It's a great review. Tons of things that I need to remember and it's really great going over the rules that I have forgotten. However; it is review for me. Some of the people in my class are just learning this stuff so it takes a few times to explain everything.
This makes the class go extremely slow. I am glad for the review but when it takes 45 minutes to learn how to conjugate the imperfect tense, I want to cry from boredom.

So the first or second day, my teacher explains that we are going to do exposés every Friday. The first one is going to be about our home countries. We get to explain our geographical location, culture, traditions etc.

Um... I'm from the united states. Everyone knows where we are. We don't have a culture. We take things from other cultures and make then worse by making them 'amurican' that is our culture. Ps. I'm the only American.

So I come to the realization that I'm eventually going to stand in this room in front of all these foreigners and tell them where the united states is. And about our culture. I hate everything about this idea but eventually I accept the terms.

My teacher asks for volunteers. I normally always volunteer to go near the beginning of things so that I can just be done with them and not have to worry. Not a single person offers to go first, not even the loud mouthed Russian girl. Great.

I realize the implications of the American volunteering to go first to talk about her home country. I'm annoyed with myself as I raise my hand. The teacher says ok, Amanda, what country will you be discussing. As I said "des etats-unis" I couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous image.

The entire class giggles along with me. Apparently it's a 'thing' to have an American friend though, because after that everyone wanted to chat about where they had been in the US, and where I was from, and how much they loooooved x type of horrible American food.

I went to go give my exposé on Friday. (written entirely about Indiana instead of all the united states. There's even a blurb about IU basketball...of course.)

My teacher was sick. This Friday it is.