La Sorbonne

It's taken me a while to even begin writing today's blog because I do not want to relive the awful, terrible memory of this afternoon.  It was atrocious.  My placement test for La Sorbonne was absolutely horrific!!  I even stayed in last night to study and review verb tenses, but that proved to be pointless.  The SATs were not this hard.  And I didn't even do that well on my SATs...Oh, man, am I in for a doozie or what!

This afternoon, after a truly inspirational tour of La Sorbonne, you know, one of the world's oldest universities, myself and 5 other CEA students found our way to the placement test for our French grammar classes set to start tomorrow.  We were "briefed" by a CEA employee who told us there was nothing to worry about and that this test was geared toward non-native speakers of the French language.  Needless to say, I thought I was solid for this afternoon's exam.  Wrong.  The six of us and about 20 other students all shuffled into a really old, Hogwarts looking classroom.  Very intimidating.  There is this mean, strict headmistress looking lady at the front of the classroom who is barking instructions to us in French.  The poor girl next to me.  She came here to learn French, as in, she has never taken or learned a word of French ever.  She was so lost because absolutely everything was in French.  Even the information sheet we had to fill out.  It was, like I said, intimidating.
So the test begins and it is awful.  I just stared at the sheet for a few minutes reading the instructions over and over again.  What?  I'm supposed to do what?  So I filled out the multiple choice portion to the best of my ability, wrote an essay about the most important invention of the 20th century.  Of course, I start to write this about the telephone.  Half way through I begin to question myself and whether the telephone was actually invented in the 1900s.  I believe I even put that in my essay: "Acctullement, je ne connais pas si le telephone etais inventer a la 20eme siecle ou le 19eme siecle."  And get this, I even concluded my essay with "Merci, Monsieur Bell".  Ahhh!!  What was I thinking?  I don't know anything about inventions of the 20th century.  I have no idea how to talk about them in English, let alone French.  Then, there was a truly terrible fill in the blank section where they put three words and asked you to complete the sentence.  My endings were completely idiotic.  For example, (I can't remember the French translation) "It is necessary that...I go to the pretty park".  I'm sure the people all around me were writing complex sentences with multiple tenses and meanwhile, I'm sitting in the back corner trying to recall anything that makes me sound the least bit like I know what I'm talking about.  Unfortunately, I have no such luck.  I thought that the worst of it was over and after only leaving 1 question blank I was ready for a drink.  However, La Sorbonne wasn't done with me yet.  The mean headmistress lady called me over and started drilling me with questions.  What?  I wasn't prepped for this!  No one told me there was an oral component....It went terribly.  I don't think I've ever said the words "je ne sais pas" more times in my three years of French.  She asked me questions that I barely even knew the vocabulary for.  How do the French say "I am a temp"?  I said "Je suis une temp" but she looked at me when I said this practically blasphemous sentence and deadpan said to me "Nous ne parlons pas l'anglais".  Ouch.  I was stumbling, butchering this woman's native tongue, trying to say that I work one week at a business and then the next week at the other.  Ugh...
Needless to say, I walked straight out of that test, met with the other CEA kids and rewarded my shaky self with a beer.  (Actually, Desperados is this amazing beer that tastes like Tequila.  Apparently its what all the high school kids drink at their little illegal parties, but I find it absolutely delightful and  necessary after that test).      

On the bright side, I was issued my Sorbonne student I.D. card today.  Pretty cool stuff.  I'm official!  Now, I just have to wait until tomorrow morning when I'll get my results.  We're supposed to be at La Sorbonne at 8:30 tomorrow morning and depending on our placement will have class at 9:00 AM or 11 AM.  Given the lack of time, I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for tomorrow, since I'm sure it'll be really fast and I'll end up running around campus trying to find my class in 30 minutes.  Hopefully it will at least be intermediate French for me!!
Wish me luck!