the adventures, conquests, and mishaps of marc koz.: Et des classes d'été commencent

Been a bit busy since my travels to Metz, France, but I found some time to do a little update. Second day of classes went by a little smoother, although it's still somewhat hard for me to get through a day without a cup or two of cafe. Today we learned about the Geography of Europe from a great British Professor and about the Institutions of the European Union from a German Professor. The class on the EU Institutions was a bit much and the information was all over the place that it was hard to get a consensus on what we were actually learning. But, the most important lesson I can tell any American is, EU is not a country like America nor do they want to be. Sovereign is how they want to stay.

ICN Business School.

I feel I'm starting to pick up the language here, I've met a few kids that live in this sort of hostel-esque apartment building. They are a little younger, but nonetheless they want to learn English and I want to learn French, so it's a good trade off. Oh yeah, about the living situation, I live in a single with my own bathroom and shower. Included was a mini fridge, a halogen light, a dresser, and a decent size closet. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all inclusive but aren't the greatest of French cuisine. For breakfast, we are served a piece of somewhat stale bread (it's okay once you break it open), butter, jam or honey, and a cafe. Lunch is served at the school and is more of a cafeteria you may be used to at high school where you pick things up on the way to the register. They give us these little printed papers that just say lunch ticket and we get our meal free. Dinner, is very similar to the procedures of lunch except it's served at the residence. What you can expect for a main course is, poulet, poisson, veal, and maybe steak or pizza. Accompanying it is various French dishes such as, pate, couscous, carrot slaw, fromage, legumes, and of course mayo. So, it's nothing too bad, I just have to watch how much I intake because it isn't the healthiest of foods. I just wish that they would give us the money they pay for the meals and we can go out into the city and try all the different restaurants in the area.

Oh what else, so much has been going on in the past 3 days. I've met close to 50 new faces and some familiar ones I have noticed from UCF. It's interesting, some students here want to be immersed in the culture while others just seem like they came here for a party. One kid in my group spent 100 euros at a market the other day just on booze. So the American stereotype on binge drinking seems to hold with this group of 40. Everyone is very nice however, I enjoy my space though and sometimes hanging out in large groups can be a bit overwhelming for me. Although, a group of about 10 is maybe planning on taking a trip to Luxembourg this weekend because of my recommendation not to go to Switzerland (because of the extra expense of changing money, etc.) So, I might tag along because I found train tickets for $42 round trip which is not bad at all.

Well, I think I am done for this little update. I will try and be a bit more frequent to the blogging, it's just that this internet is very slow and I'm at school from about 8-5 during the week. Tomorrow, French 1 at 8:00 AM. French food and table tradition @ 10:00 AM. Visiting Saint-Etienne de Metz in the afternoon, should be exciting. Oh, and before I forget, today we got our picture taken at the City Hall in Metz because we had a bit of a welcoming and it is supposed to be featured in the newspaper tomorrow.

Metz Centre-Ville