Students at the Institute

When the sounds of happy children playing annoy you, it's your own fault. I'm running fairly low on sleep, but not so low that I don't have time to keep you all updated.

It's high time that I speak a little bit about student life and the student community at the Institute of Touraine. The number of students studying at the moment at the Institute probably doesn't exceed 100, although most students stay no more than a month. I know a Russian journalist, age 27, and currently studying the most elementary level of French, whose stay will last only two weeks; by contrast, another acquaintance of mine, whose French skills are equivalent to my own, plans to study at the Institute until February. The youngest student I have met is 15, but some students have been over age 70, and the median age is roughly my own. Most live with host families, but some live in youth hostels, instead.

There are students represented from every inhabited continent, although Africa is underrepresented, and Europe is overrepresented. The chief countries of origin seem to be Japan, Italy, and Russia; there are only a few Americans. Students tend to be fairly clannish concerning nationality. Not only does language present a major issue (and virtually all students immediately revert to their native languages the moment class is over, at the latest), but even students from the different Spanish-speaking and Anglophone countries don't necessarily associate. No: the one Aussie I know doesn't spend time with the Brits, and the Spanish form a separate group from the Latin Americans. Surprisingly, different groups tend to be more or less willing to associate with others. Although I hate to reinforce the stereotypes of both IHS and Cornell, yes, the Korean girls travel in packs, and speak in Korean to each other nonstop (note: we all signed an agreement not to speak in our native languages unless absolutely necessary). The Russians, however, go out of their way to practice their French, and to avoid speaking in Russian.

Smoking is extremely common, especially among the Europeans.

Everyone knows a little English, and most students seem to be proficient or fluent. Back when westerners still all had classical educations, students would learn Latin first, which they then used as an aid when learning Greek and the romance languages. English seems to be the new Latin: if a word is obscure or difficult to explain, the professor often gives an English cognate.

Many of the younger students at first come off as spoiled children uninterested in studying, and more concerned with gossip, food, and cigarettes. However, this attitude presupposes that my peers are students first and tourists second. To be fair, many are happy to attend obligatory classes, but do not see the Institute as their full-time profession.

I had an excellent time with a group of friends last night at the ginguette by the Loire. A "ginguette" is a restaurant/bar with music and other entertainment, and the ginguette in Tours is probably the most popular site of student life. Wine and, later, whiskey flowed, and there was a game of spin-the-bottle, using a modified version of the Russian rules. We all spoke in French: I looked over the shoulder of the Korean student sitting next to me, and saw that she was even texting in French! We were all very, very tired today in class today.

Hmm, I probably could have written more today, if I hadn't discovered that episodes of "Les Schtroumpfs" ("The Smurfs" in English) are available on YouTube.

La la lalalala, la lalala la! Hooray for all Belgian comics!

~JD


"Pendant quinze heures, une armee dont on ne gaussait avait tenu en echec l'armee la mieux entrainee du monde" [In fifteen hours, a laughingstock of an army had defeated the best-trained army in the world] (Marc Bouloiseau, La Republique jacobine, p. 52).