10 new and different things in my new and different life

(In no particular order other than that in which they randomly popped into my head.)

1. Skinny-ness
No one here is fat. Okay, of course I don't really mean no one. But I can think of one or two people that I have seen (and no one who I actually know) who are not average weight plus or minus a few pounds. kilos. whatever.

2. Hello
Everyone says hello to everyone. Not in the big cities, but here when you walk into or leave a store, when you pass somebody on an empty street, when you go into or leave a restaurant - bonjour, au revoir, bonsoir, salut. More than I was used to even in little Rio Rico.

3. Bisous (kisses)
With friends, you kiss them on the cheek to say hello. Every time. If you don't it's almost sort of offensive - your friends notice and bring it up if you don't give them a kiss and say hello. You do the same with anybody you know even a little bit. But that is all you do. If I walk into a room and make eye contact with someone I don't know, I'm used to smiling or waving. You don't do that here. People don't smile back, don't wave back... It took me off guard at first, but it's just something you hardly ever see here.

4. Feet/syllables
In my French class we're studying poetry, starting with the basics. I remember worksheets that I loved so much trying to split each line into its feet, trying to figure out whether to mark a dactylic foot or an iambic foot. But French poetry doesn't have feet!!! It has syllables, but no feet!

5. Music notes
Here, rather than naming music note by letters, as I am used to (a, b, c, d, e, f, g), they use words. The do re mi method. But even that isn't the same. It's do re mi fa so la ci do.

6. HORTON Caitlin
On every official document you write LAST NAME first name. So I write HORTON Caitlin, rather than Caitlin Horton or Horton, Caitlin. Because my driver's license reads (in all caps):
CAITLIN
ELIZABETH
HORTON
I ended up being registered for my theater class as Elizabeth Caitlin. As in my last name is Caitlin and my first name is Elizabeth (and Horton dropped off into the atmosphere). But we managed to straighten it all out. Caitlin Elizabeth Horton exists again.

7. Teachers teach everything
My titulaire - sort of my home room teacher, though we have no home room class period - is my French teacher, my history teacher and my religion teacher. And from my impression, a lot of the teachers teach multiple combinations of things like that.

8. Random starting points
Each year students have history and geography rather than one year one class, one year the next. For that reason (or I can only assume so) we start in the most random places. The first lecture we had in geography (this is cultural geography, I believe it would be called) was on India's revolution for independence from Britain. In history we started with European political systems of the 1700s.

9. Cursive
Everyone writes in cursive. In really, really pretty cursive. Okay, I take that back. Every student - boys and girls - have beautiful cursive writing. The teachers tend to have hardly legible cursive, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it's a result of writing on the white board. Either way, I'm not a teacher. And I don't writing in beautiful cursive. In fact, my cursive is worse than my print, which tells you a lot.

10. Pens
No one uses pencil except in math, and most people use fountain pens. The real kind that you pay 15 euros for and whose tips look like the next step after quills. But even better, the ink in those kinds of pens erases. It's awesome.