Day 25: ICP & a play

Yesterday was my first day of my class at l'Instituie Catholique de Paris (ICP) and I was super nervous for it all day. I was talking to people who already had their first class at ICP and they kept saying things like they understood about 75% of what the teacher said, and how they thought that was good and I was getting really worried that my class would be too difficult for me and that it would be aweful. Also I was worried that the prof and the other students would make fun of my accent or just be really standoffish and rude. Well as it turns out I did have reason to worry but not about the class itself. Finding the actually class room was probably one of the most stressful and hardest things I have done since I got here. I had this lovely map printed out of where to go and had written directions down and got of the metro with 45 mins to find my classroom so I figured I was good. Wrong. First off, there are three ICP campuses, but they are all right next to eachother. I went to the one that my map said to go to and looked around and there were only 3 buildings: F, G, and H. My paper said my classroom was in building C so I said to myself, aha it must be in the other campus. So I walked around the main campus and coundn't find building C. I finally asked the information desk and they said it was in the third campus (which is on the same property as the main campus but you have to enter it through a different street). So I walked over to the third campus and found building C. Great! So than I looked and saw my paper said my classroom was on the 2nd floor room 23. I went up to the 2nd floor and there were classrooms 21, 22, 24, and 25. Hummmm. After wandering around this tiny floor trying to figure out where they hid classroom 23 I went back downstairs and asked a lady who was hanging up a flier on a buliton board. She gave me the "quoi? tu parle a moi" look and was very very rude, the first time this has happened to me when asking parisians questions in french. She basically told me she had no idea where my class was, and that she was locking up building C now so I had to get out. At this point I only had about 10 mins left before my class started and was starting to freak out about would I get there in time, what if I can't find it and miss the first day, will I have to drop it and take another IES class even though I would have already missed 3 days of that. I walked back to the information desk, and asked them where the class was for "The keys of Christianity". He gave me a blank stare and said there is no class by that name. At this point I was absolutly desparate and asked him if there was a class with a similar name at the same time. Turns out the name of my class was switched to "The basics of Chiristianity" between when i registered and yesterday and no one told me. Also my room was changed, and it was in building F where I had stared from. I ran over there and all the way up 4 flights of stairs and ended up getting to my class 5 mins early which was a miracle. And of course, right when the clock struck 7 (the time my class starts) a whole group of Parisians wandered in, knowing exacly what was going on and where they were supposed to be. I took this as a sign that I will never fully understand how Paris works, and I will always be the American. I think I am ok with this. Anyways, my class ended up being fabulous, since it is a review course for my major, I didn't learn anything but it was interesting to hear it from a different point of view. I had no trouble understanding the prof, which made me very happy I definatly got 100% of what he said. He, and the students in my class are much nicer that the norm of what I have heard from my friends, and I think it had something to to with the fact that it is a religion class and all the people in it are religious. I definatly think it will end up being my favorite and most interesting class so now I can't wait for next week!
This evening I went to the first play for a class I am taking called "Theater in Paris". We read 4 plays and go see them all (one we see twice, two different versions) and one that we don't read, and tonight was the play we finished discussing in class today called l'Europenne by David Lascot. Its a very new play, it opened in 2008 and it basically talks about the french peoples' point of view on the EU and what is going on in Europe right now so it was super interesting. It was also absolutly hillarious, much more in the production that in the actual script. It was a lot of fun, and afterwards David Lescot came out and talked to the few people who waited around for him, and he signed my copy of the play :) it was super interesting to talk to him, because he is also the director and he made some changes to the play since he origonally published it so it was really cool to get to pick his brain a bit about why he made those changes.