For the first half of this week, my days have been busy with classes. It’s still quite difficult to stay awake for 3 hours, especially when I have trouble staying awake for 50 minute classes at UNBSJ.
Last Friday, there was a party at my flat attended by most of the international students as well as several French students of ESCEM, as you may have already seen in my gallery photos. Ben, one of my housemates, operated a bar where everyone pays 6€ and then gets whatever they want. Contrary to popular belief, I did not drink at the party and am not drunk at all in the party photo of me.
The picture of me mentioned above is of course not right here. You can find it in my gallery.
Ben named our place the “Frog et Rosbif”. Anglophones tend to refer to speakers of French as “frogs”, and Francophones tend to refer to North American speakers of English as “rosbif” or “roast beef”, because we burn and change colour in the sun. The name was decently chosen. At the party, you could easily hear a mixture of English and French being spoken by everyone. I was able to speak in French with a few French students.
The sun finally showed its cautious self here in Poitiers, and I took a few more photos in the Parc de Blossac, which is right near my flat.
I also saw a funny looking traffic garage type of building. For some odd reason, it was quite entertaining to watch a car slowly ascend this thing.
Just today in class, I learned something new about Europeans from Christoph, my German teacher of Strategic Management. He was answering “yes” to a student, while shaking his head left and right as if to say “no”. Apparently, any shaking of the head in Europe always signifies a yes response, as opposed to North Americans who can say Yes or No by shaking the head. You can easily imagine the possible communication issues in conversations if a tourist visiting Europe is not aware of this.
Awesome to see you’re having fun Paul
. Can’t wait for the next post 
France looks pretty! You party animal.