Grasse-Matinee Thursdays

It's not fat Tuesday here for me; it's fat Thursday. At least, that's what the French call sleeping in late. "Faire la grasse-matinee" literally means to do the fat morning. In American terms it means I can sleep in! For my 1ere ES 3 class here, all of the students (saving me, bien sur) partake in four hours of DS every Thursday morning. From what I can tell, DS is like an all-year school project. It doesn't really matter to me, anyways, since I don't have to do it. After spending most of my morning laying about the house doing nothing, I walked to E.Leclerc and bought a few school supplies. The bus stop is right in front of the store, across from the parking lot, so when I finished shopping at around 12:15, I went and sat next to an old lady (she seemed to me to be at least 80). She was nice and we talked for a few minutes. She asked if I were a tourist, and i responded with my whole story about coming here. (Not really, though) The bus came fifteen minutes early. It was supposed to arrive at 12:48, but got there at 12:27 instead. I was glad that I had allowed for some extra time. (Imagine missing the bus! That would have been horrible!) Ten minutes later, the bus dropped me off at the Sous-Prefecture. Sabine, Heloise, and I had driven the route from where I was to be deposited to the school yesterday. Unfortunately, this bus stop was different from the one to which we had gone yesterday. Oopse! I noticed a few stores that I recognized, but couldn't connect any of them with the route to Lycee St. Paul. I ended up walking all the way to the end of the street and back until I asked another elderly woman where I could find the school. (I don't usually make it a habit of talking to complete strangers, but she looked safe. Don't worry!) She didn't exactly know, but at the same time, I saw a girl from my class and followed her. (At lunch time we are allowed to leave the campus, so that is why she was not at school.) Right before I got to the entrance to the school, Yamina (a super outgoing and friendly girl from my class) and her friend Alexia. So, instead of going on the high school's campus, I walked with them next door to the college's campus and we sat on benches there and talked for a few minutes.
In English class we read a small dialogue from Friends, the tv show! I was so excited! Sadly, the classroom tv didn't work, so we couldn't watch the episode. We wrote down synonyms and antonyms to English words, filling in the blanks and such. I at least felt helpful to Soumaya, who sat next to me and Pauline, Ophelie, Caroline, and Matine sitting around me. Someone (I haven't learned everyone's name yet) sitting across the classroom shouted that I had to sit next to him next class. Someone else asked Soumaya if she had just cheated off of me (which she didn't!) because that's what he would do. Following French, I had EPS (P.E.) for two hours. We did not actually go outside or do anything athletic, though; we just chose what we wanted to do for EPS and wrote out the introduction sheet. On the intro that we wrote, the EPS coaches asked us to write a paragraph about the difference between sports and EPS. The girls sitting next to me seemingly read what I had written and were astounded that I had not made any mistakes in my French. I, too, was astounded. For EPS the teachers gave us three choices. There were four sports in each choice. I ended up choosing the second choice of table-tennis (it's apparently the more athletic version of ping-pong), step (yes, like the stairmaster), accro (I think that's like acrobatics/gymnastics), and basket (basketball). I'm not completely sure because I wasn't paying attention the whole time, but I think that everyone also has to do a unit of swimming.