Philosophie

No, I didn't spell it wrong - that's how the French spell it! And, since they care about philosophy much more than Americans do, I think we should go with their spelling. Anyway, this entry is going to be super short - it's past midnight and I have to wake up at 5:00 tomorrow to go to the Loire Valley (so, no blog entry tomorrow) with Alexandra and a bunch of other international students. It should be fun.

My philosophy course at La Sorbonne was much better than the Paris 8 one. Even if it hadn't have been, though, I still would have taken it - 9:00 on a Friday morning is preferable to 6:00-9:00 on a Tuesday night. And, this professor's actually French and really made the whole question of "What is man?" seem incredibly interesting. Plus, this will be a typical French course, unlike the ones at Paris 8. As a validation, at the end I will have to do a dissertation (in 4 hours, which seems easy compared to what Justine does at l'ENS on a regular basis: 7 hour dissertations without a lunch break!) and an oral expose. There might be more - I haven't given it a ton of thought. It seems like a very interesting basic philosophy course though, and I'll be reading really great texts and looking forward to seeing what we decide that man is. The most interesting part was when he noted that man is the only animal that poses the question of his definition.

I had another flute lesson too. My flute teacher here is great - he's really helping me nail down the most minute details of my playing. But, the annoying part is that these lessons are the only time I'm in Paris when I don't completely understand someone. The problem is the vocabulary, but it was better this time than last time. I'll give it two more lessons before I buy a French book about music and start memorizing vocabulary words.

Then, I taught English - I love teaching English! It's a ton of fun to see the problems foreigners have with my language. Half the time, the problems are exactly the opposite of problems I've had in French. For example, Jerome today had a problem with the expression: "The more I..., the more I ..." He didn't see why it was "the more" as opposed to just "more" like the French expression: "Plus je..., plus je..." I remember saying "Le plus..." But then, sometimes their questions make me wonder how on Earth anyone can learn English. The rules really just don't seem as well defined to me as French rules, but maybe that's just because I've been formally taught French more recently. Who knows? All I know is that the word "sew" makes absolutely no sense. At least "coudre" sounds like it looks.

Okay, I should go to bed so I can get at least four and a half hours of sleep. These castles better be worth it...