Mostly, my dread of Thursdays is based on the fact that I have three long classes throughout the day, and they're exhausting. My first is a two-hour French literature class that starts at 8 a.m. sharp. Unfortunately, I'm the only non-native French speaker in that class, and leave it to me to pick the one course at University of Strasbourg whose grade is based on participation. Last week, I volunteered to read part of the book excerpt out loud (earning those participation points!), but I managed to murder the pronunciation of almost every single word in those paragraphs due to my nervousness. I finished reading and looked up, and found half the class turned around in their seats and staring at me. Yeah. So that's a fun class.
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| Just leaving for my 8am lit. class today as the sun rises |
My second class on Thursdays is a two-and-a-half-hour CIEL class, which is an intensive-language learning class that Holy Cross makes us take to improve our grammar and writing skills. My third class, immediately following the CIEL class, is Histoire d'Alsace, another two-and-a-half-hour lecture about all the wars that have taken place over the Alsatian region.
This all adds up to 7 hours of class. Perhaps that doesn't seem too terrible, but when every single word of each class is in rapid-fire French and you have to focus 120% on what is being explained (and still miss a good chunk of information), those 7 hours are absolutely exhausting.
Hence, Thursdays are not my favorite day of the week.
Today, however, turned out to be quite different! My 8 a.m. literature class actually went relatively smoothly this morning, although I only spoke one single word, which happened to be "injuste" (can I receive participation points for that??). Afterwards, I hopped over to my favorite café to drink some tea and read Emile Zola's 567-page novel Germinal (written completely in 1800's French--this book might be the death of me), and I ended up staying at the café for almost two hours! My two afternoon classes ended up getting canceled, so my dreaded and tiring Thursday turned into a pretty relaxed one.
By 2:30 in the afternoon, Kat and I had eaten lunch, and we were soaking up the sun/half-dozing on the public beach chairs located on Strasbourg's "beach" (read: a cement riverbank near the cinema) when Kat had a brilliant idea to take advantage of our cancelled classes: why not walk to Germany?
Now I have ate, slept, and lived just meters from the German border for the past month, yet until this afternoon, I hadn't been to Germany, so I instantly agreed.
The walk ended up being a bit further than I had originally thought, and I really wasn't wearing the proper shoes for long walks (these boots are NOT made for walking...) but even though my feet will probably hurt for the next few days, the trip to Germany was totally worth it.
I JUST CASUALLY WALKED TO GERMANY AND BACK.
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| Kat with Germany in the background |
There, I said it. I've always wanted to say that! I mean, I've never just walked to another country before!! And I didn't even need a visa or a passport or anything; we just walked across the cool bridge and voila! Germany! Craziness.
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| Standing on the German side, looking towards France |
And actually, the grass on Germany's side of the river bank was literally greener. No joke! Hence the name of this post. Kat and I sat on a bench in the much-greener Germany for a good while--just to relax and people-watch--and it was so strange hearing all the German speakers! I'm used to living life in a foreign language that I mostly understand, but this was one that I couldn't grasp at all! Then, when a random French couple would pass us, our ears would automatically prick up at the French chatter and I couldn't help thinking: "Known Language! Known Language!"
So today, I spontaneously walked over to Germany for an hour or two. You really never know where life will take you when you wake up in the morning, huh?
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