Academic Update/African Food

Salut tout le monde!

Believe it or not (I don't really believe it myself), I have only one more day of classes in Montpellier! I have a Phonetics test tomorrow afternoon for which I sorely need to study, followed by the final session of my literature class. Yesterday I took my Grammar exam, which I'm almost positive I passed. My entire grade for that class came down to literally 20 questions where I had to identify the category and function of certain groupings of a paragraph. This morning I took my philosophy exam, for which I actually felt rather prepared and which, depending on how my professor grades, of course, I think I passed as well. It was a commentaire de texte (commentary) on a part of the preface of the third section of Spinoza's Ethics. Interesting thinker, that Spinoza. I largely disagree with his philosophy, but he was quite bold for someone writing in the 17th century. With some focused studying (and a little Frisbee break this evening) I think I'll pass my Phonetics exam as well.

I just barely got a passing grade in my Poetics class which ended last week. It's my only third-year course I took this semester, and the professor is sharp, well-read, and clearly a discerning critical thinker. I put in a lot of time but not as much as I would have wanted for my paper, and before I got it back all I was really hoping for was a passing grade. After a not altogether encouraging introduction where she said the papers ranged from excellent to failing, she passed back our essays and I guess I got exactly what I asked for -- a 10.5, one-half point above the minimum passing grade. I was somewhat relieved but by no means thrilled. Later, when I flipped through to read her notes, to my great surprise I noticed that there were pages missing. Actually, earlier in the week she had emailed me to tell me that the last page was missing, so I sent it to her and apologized for not having stapled them together. But apparently it was a printing error and not a packaging error, because my paper was also missing the sixth and the ninth pages. For an 11-page paper, that's a significant amount of missing text. That I still received a passing grade proved to me two things and taught me one other. One, I should be perfectly content to receive a 10.5 on an incomplete work, and two, that she must not have read my essay all that carefully. I hate to assume that it's because I'm an exchange student and that she gave less time and attention to my work because she figured it could be mediocre at best, but it's hard to let go of that assumption. It's maybe the first time I have felt treated unfairly in the education system. Oh yes, and what I learned: always check to make sure all the pages printed out right.

And as an aside, I simply have to say something about how I spent my evening last night. My Camerooni (is that what we say?) friend, Bertrand, invited me and others to an African restaurant downtown called the Massai. Since we were meeting at the university at 7, I figured I'd have a couple hours to study afterward, but -- and all the better -- the night unfolded in typical southern France / African tardiness. We got there a little before 8. The upstairs is nothing extraordinary -- a few tables, a small bar -- but the gentleman led us downstairs, where a table awaited all ten of us, chairs on one side and a long cushioned seat with red and gold-embroidered pillows on the other. Then he started up the music, popular African songs that played on speakers more fit for a club than a restaurant. Well, they were perfectly fit for this restaurant; Bertrand and my Senegalese friend, Sylvain, told me that nearly all restaurants in Africa have music playing like that. They eat for a while, then they dance, then they eat, then they dance some more. And Bertrand and Sylvain certainly danced. Bertrand asked the waiter to put on some Camerooni music, and once that got going he became even more animated than he usually is. Dancing and grooving to the music (it's great music -- so rhythmic!) and discussing what we would all order, somehow we ended up getting our main courses at nearly 10:30. Who knows if it was all the waiting or if it was simply the culinary quality, but that food tasted so damn good. The Aloko -- fried plantains -- was amazing. Naturally, we passed several moments in relative silence, our attention suddenly on other things than music and conversation. After more dancing and more eating we ended up leaving after midnight and getting back to the dorms around 1. I'm not accustomed to eating African food, to dining with music booming at my back, or to having dinner out last for six hours, but I tell you what -- I am certainly a fan.