Day 28

July 24, 2013

I woke up early to meet my INB 300 group at 7:30 in the breakfast room of the hotel so we could finish up our assignment and e-mail it to our professor. We finished around 9:00, so I went back upstairs to study a bit more for French. I felt like I should be more concerned than I was, but I honestly wasn’t too worried. Molly and I had managed to have a 10-minute long French conversation (albeit a slow one with English thrown in occasionally), and I had forced myself to do so many verb conjugations that I felt prepared. The previous night Molly suggested that I add in a few sentences about working in television and my job as Director of TealTV during my conversation.

I caught the bus around 10:00 with my classmates and friends in the upper level French class. We also learned on the bus that the word for film director is “réalisateur.” Our exam started at 11:00 and consisted of a 45-minute written test with some easy questions from a text, verb conjugations, and a few sentences about what we like and don’t like. I realized later on that I’d had some grammar issues, but when in doubt I think “Je déteste Joffery Baratheon.” (from Game of Thrones) is always an acceptable answer. Afterwards we had our one-on-one speaking portion. Mine actually went pretty well. I talked about the things that I’d planned to and my professor asked me about TealTV, my favorite places to travel and how long I’d been taking French. He seemed disappointed that I didn’t plan on taking any more classes, but I tried to explain that I didn’t really have the time. Minus my grammar mistakes on the written part, I think I did pretty well.

I was so glad to be done with summer school! It was only about 1:00, so Molly, Morgan, Rachael and I went to Vieux Port to shop around a market there. Interact was taking a group to the Mucem later in the afternoon, so we planned to meet them there. I got some gifts for people, and we went to the Mucem to wait for everyone around 2:45. We didn’t go inside until nearly 4:00! I love the cool things that Interact plans for us, but sometimes I wish it ran a bit more smoothly. I got to see a Vernet painting, but it was really crowded and I didn’t see much else. My friends and I had planned to leave a bit early anyways to go to Cours Julien, which is like the hipster district of Marseille. It had some neat shops and fun graffiti, but only for 2 blocks or so. We went back to the hotel, out to dinner, and back to Vieux Port with everyone to celebrate classes being over. I didn’t stay for too long; one of my friends was feeling nauseous, so I walked her home.

We did a lot of neat things in one day on top of me having two exams! I’m getting sad that it’s nearing the end of our trip, but at the same time I’m about ready to come home. I’ve been getting e-mail updates from school about this and that, and it’s made me realize that I have a lot of work to do when I get back home. I wish I could’ve stayed here longer, but hopefully I’ll be back someday.