{"id":732,"date":"2016-06-12T08:50:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T12:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/sla2016\/?p=732"},"modified":"2016-06-12T08:50:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-12T12:50:45","slug":"tours-week-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/2016\/06\/12\/tours-week-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Tours Week 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2016-06-11<\/a><\/p>\n

I spent the day in Paris yesterday! The main thing I wanted to see was Notre Dame de Paris, so I was a little disappointed that I didn\u2019t get to spend as much time there as I would\u2019ve liked, but at least I still got to see it. It\u2019s absolutely gorgeous, and as I walked around inside the cathedral I really think I could distinctly feel Our Lady\u2019s presence. As one of the biggest tributes to Mary, one of the eponyms to my university, and just an all-around stunning location, I think it\u2019s officially earned the status of my favorite church in the world. I also saw the Eiffel Tower (I mean, I couldn\u2019t just not) and the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay. Exhausting day, and of course I didn\u2019t see everything, but I hit a few major landmarks and really tried to take the time for them.<\/p>\n

Other than that, it\u2019s been a pretty quiet week, so I don\u2019t have much to say about my classes at the Institut de Touraine at the moment. We\u2019ve been doing a lot of exercises made to resemble this standardized test that a lot of other students are here to take, so that\u2019s comprised most of our lessons. I have mixed feelings about them, since I sometimes feel like my level of French is being evaluated solely on how much trouble I\u2019m having on the exercises, when in reality I\u2019d have the same problems with them in English\u2014because the audio recordings are poor quality, the questions are more specific than the excerpt, I can\u2019t listen and write at the same time, etc. Because of that, I feel like I\u2019m noticing more improvement in my French skills outside of the classroom. For instance, in the past week I\u2019ve had to explain the game \u201cHumans versus Zombies,\u201d the reasons I think American students have trouble with foreign languages, and the culture of respect in fencing as opposed to other sports, all in French. In all of these instances it\u2019s been easier for me to find words to express things, without making the French-speaker I\u2019m talking to even more confused and wishing I hadn\u2019t brought it up. I also was trying to translate something for my host mom and couldn\u2019t remember the English word, and she said, \u201cHooray, she\u2019s forgetting English!\u201d<\/p>\n

Four down, two to go! It doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve been here for a month, but it\u2019s been almost exactly that long. I miss home, but I hope I can take advantage of my last two weeks here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the day in Paris yesterday! The main thing I wanted to see was Notre Dame de Paris, so I was a little disappointed that I didn\u2019t get to spend as much time there as I would\u2019ve liked, but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}