First day of school!

So had my first day of classes today! It was fun/stressful. Everything is taught in French (I take my courses as if I were a regular French student), which is exciting because it will give me a chance to improve my comprehension at a rapid pace. It will also give me the chance to get really frustrated and then choose not to listen and decide to eat almonds out of a zip-lock bag hidden in the pocket of my peacoat instead. (I didn't actually do that but if I wanted to I totally could have.)
So in French University land, you usually have two sessions for each course: a Course Magistrale (CM), which is a big lecture class held in a lecture hall with 100+ students, and a Travaux Diriges (TD), which consists of smaller group work (20-40 students) and is held in a classroom. My first class was a History of Modern Art course (CM). My schedule said that it started at 9am but when I opened the door to the Amphitheatre that it was held in, at around 8:45am, class had clearly started and was already in progress. I had opened the door at the bottom of the Amphitheatre so everyone could see me peek my head in, which was terrifying, so i just shut the door and stayed in the hall to contemplate my next move. I went upstairs to the entrance that would be at the top of the Amphitheatre and found a woman who explained that lecture was separated into two parts, Architechture (8-9am) and then Painting (the course I was signed up for, 9-10am) and that they have a smoke break in the middle, and that's when I could go in. Without that bit of knowledge I probably would have just stayed in the hall, shitting my pants and peeking through the crack of the door trying to figure out what to do.
So that class was great, had about 200 students, discussed religious themed artwork of Europe in the 1600's and I understood most of what was said. My next class, Modern History (CM), decided that it was going to change both time and location without notifying anyone, so I ended up waiting at the wrong Amphiteatre, then going to another building to speak with the History secretary to find out where and when my class had moved to. Turns out it was 2 floors up and started an hour earlier than my schedule said. So I caught the last 30 minutes of that course (the professor was talking about taxation without representation in the English colonies of America) and then had a Sandwich with Emma, a super fun Pitzer student who is also studying here.
My last course of the day was the TD session of my History of Modern Art course, which was great because I was there on time, and we received an assignment, did it in class, turned it in at the end of class, and then left with no assigned homework. I went up to the professor at the end of the class and she confirmed that there wouldn't ever be work outside of class. Ever. Super.
They have all of these wonderful cafes around campus, all of which serve espresso, and you have to drink it sitting down, there is no such thing as coffee "to-go". The equivalent (sort of the equivalent but not really) would be getting a tiny coffee from the vending machine, "go"-ing outside, and drinking it while you smoke a cigarette and chat with your friends.
I went for splendid run through village-y neighborhoods near my dorm that led me down to the dirt path that follows the river Erdre. I kept running until I hit a field of horses and then decided to turn back. My rural french countryside running skills are still developing (i.e. I don't know how to get horse shit off of my shoes yet so i wasn't gonna go there...).
I watched Obama's big day on CNN live on my computer, made a dope ham and ementhal cheese omlette for dinner with my Pitzer lady friends, and am now I will go to bed early. I have a 9:30am date with the laundry facilities (which I had to make an appointment for oddly enough) tomorrow morning. My French is getting better by the day which is very nice. See you guys later!