On my second day here in Angers, I had to go take a placement test, at the Université in order to find out what level I would be placed in. Since my test was at 9:30, I figured that I had to be up at 7:45 in order to allow myself plenty of time to get ready and get over to the school. While I thought 7:45 was early enough, apparently my jet-lagged body thought thought differently. I was wide awake at 4am! It was like my body was saying, "Why are you asleep? It's 7pm! You should be awake right now!" I managed to force myself to go back to sleep until about 5:30 when my body finally said, "Wake up. NOW." So, I laid in bed reading until my actual intended wake up time at 7:45. I got up, got dressed, and went in the kitchen to have a delicious breakfast that my host-mom had made for me. She even made me tea in one of those travel coffee mugs so that it would still be hot when I woke up :)
After breakfast, my host-dad kindly walked with me to the Université to make sure that I found where my test was and that I didn't get lost. Along the way, he described to me all the different shops that we saw including where I should go to buy bread (YUM!). When I got to the auditorium (amhpithéatre en français) where I was to take my test, I felt like I always do when walking into a room full of people that I don't know: scared out of my mind. Fortunately, I was able to find a row without a giant group of people in it which calmed my nerves a lot.
The test itself was three parts: oral comprehension, common usage, and written comprehension. The oral comprehension was first, but the person giving the test had accidentally grabbed the wrong CD and didn't realize it until after we had already begun the test! As you can imagine, the first part of the test was quite confusing. In addition to the wrong CD, the people in the recordings spoke extremely fast so I had trouble understanding them. Oh well, c'est la vie! The other two parts of the test were fine, which will, hopefully, make up for the parts that I didn't understand in the oral comprehension.
After the test, the entire CIDEF group was standing in the hallway outside the auditorium. It was extremely intimidating to try and meet anyone because there were so many large groups. I was standing by myself, gathering up my courage to talk to someone, when this girl, who was also by herself, walked up to me and introduced herself. I was so relieved to have met someone who was in a similar situation. Her name is Mary, and she and I ended up spending the rest of the day together. After standing around in the hallway for a while, our group suddenly started to move toward the university restaurant (what they call the cafeteria). Of course, since none of us knew where we were going, we managed to get lost. So, Mary, being a brave soul, went up to people and asked them where the restaurant was. It turns out that we were standing right in front of it and didn't even know it! We walked in, bought our meal tickets for 3 euros and had a good meal (for costing only 3 euros).
After lunch, we made our way back to the building we had taken our test in where we were going to have a tour of the city! We were led around by two of the school's assistants, who showed us all the stores and sights that we could possibly want to see in the city. However, because we were moving so quickly, I don't think I would be able to find them all on my own without a map.
More later on yesterday and today!! Now, I must go find food (woo french food!!)
ah isn't tea the best?! I got addicted in France, my host mom made it for me every night before bed.
ReplyDeletearg placement tests... and with the wrong cd?! ick.
I can't imagine being in such a large group, we had only 30 people and it was still terrifying for me to make friends in a foreign language. I know you'll find someone who you click with :)
miss you!!