FIELD NOTE 5.14 - Credit transfer.

After trying to get an answer from VCU since February about how my credit from classes here in Nantes would transfer, I have only just today received a response. And even that was after sending an email to the head advisor for the World Studies Department and copying the head of the French Department to ensure a response.
The good news is that I got my answer. The bad news is that I now have no idea what to do with it.
It seems that I am now enrolled in 1 unnecessary course in the Fall and I have no ideas what, if anything, this does for my plans of applying to a few French MA/PhD programs.
So now there are more questions, more emails. And I hope that there will be responses...

FIELD NOTE 5.13 - Chocolat chaud.

I don't know when it was decided, but some time between yesterday and today the idea began that Ziming, Jagna and I should grab a quick coffee after the exam. When we finally made it to the café at the Pole Étudiant we all discovered that none of us was really in the mood for coffee and Ziming and I both chose instead hot chocolates while Jagna elected for an Earl Grey tea.
Drinks in hand, we walked outside to absorb some of the sunshine that made today's chilly weather almost bearable. Ziming lit a cigarette she bummed off another student and began talking to Jagna about plans to start a business if she could not find one here in Nantes within the next year. All the while I sat and listened, occasionally sipping on my hot chocolate or tracing the paths of the ants at my feet.
Ziming kept commenting on my silence and I kept giving her that time-worn line: "I'm just a little tired today." I couldn't tell her about how all of her talk of permanence saddens me or how I am just beginning to realize that I will never know it in my life. No, for me it is to be a life of constant movement and constant searching I fear. She must have read something in my face or my eyes because she told me that she will miss me and that she hopes I realize that I can always go back.
But is there any real going back?

FIELD NOTE 5.12 - Let the exams begin.

Today was my first exam: comprehension écrite or, in English, the "Can you read 2 extremely boring articles and extract from them useless and sometimes implied information that will be of no real use to you in life afterward?" exam.
The test was scheduled to begin at 14h00 but we all had to be there 30 minutes beforehand to have the extremely complicated system for rendering the test anonymous that seemed to me nothing more than a waste of paper. But if I have learned one thing here it is that the French love to keep their illusions so I decided not to begrudge the test proctors this and dutifully filled out and then sealed the portion of the cover sheet that contained my personal information.
The test itself - an hour and a half - passed quite quickly as I read an article about monoparental families and the dangers they can pose to both parents and children which was followed by a rather boring and complicated interview discussing the paradox that arises from giving children equal rights as adults and education systems. Not really caring about any of this, I just shut all my thinking down and wrote out responses until I finished, 5 minutes before time was to be called. Since I was trapped in my place by students on either side of me, I just put the test into its "anonymous" booklet and twiddled my thumbs until time was called and everyone began to move forward to sign their names and turn in their booklets.
And so it was that I finished my first French exam.

FIELD NOTE 5.11 - Tired.

Some days I tire of writing this blog and feel that I'm trying to reach a truth that I'll never really see or understand.
This is one of those days.
So today I will just say that today was a day of endings and let that suffice.

FIELD NOTE 5.10 - Columbine, flower of folly.

Columbine, flower of folly, grows in a crack of the sidewalk. People walk by and don't notice, another folly.

FIELD NOTE 5.9 - I realize now...

...I have never been happier than this moment: riding in Ziming's car and talking about tomorrows.

FIELD NOTE 5.8 - The end of classes.

I've seen this day coming for a while now and the entire class has pretty much been counting down to it since we came back from vacation 2 weeks ago, but even still I wasn't quite prepared for the end of classes today. Part of this denial is probably because if I acknowledge the end of classes, I will have to also acknowledge that my time here in France is quickly drawing to an end - something that is just too sad to even think about right now. The rest is just the knowledge that even still there are exams that will last until next Tuesday and between now and then there are still dozens of things left to do and to study.
I think I perhaps might have been had the actual end of the classes not have been so anticlimactic. In truth I don't know quite what I was expecting from the profs - surely no tearful goodbyes or testaments of how much we've all improved and grown over these past few months - but the almost clinical endings to the class definitely was far short of expectation.
I suppose it is only rational that IRFFLE classes should end this way. After all, half of us are going back to our respective countries where we will go on to tell stories in the past tense about our stay here while the other half will go on to look for jobs and positions in France and their stories, too, will be in the past tense.
The saddest part about all of this seemed to me the fact that this sort of ending doesn't bode well for any sort of lasting remembrance. I like to think that perhaps some memory of me will linger on here once I am gone but in truth this might not be very possible given the number of international students that pass through the Université of Nantes every year.
Still though every now and then perhaps Annick or Marion will say something or see something that makes them think about that one American student with unruly bangs who said stupid things. That would be enough for me.