French Students!

There is an advanced language course at NYU called Advanced Conversation and one of the really cool thing about it is that every Thursday, NYU students in this class get together with French students who are learning English.  I'm not in the class (it's too advanced for me) but a good friend of mine is.  Since we just finished our first week of actual school, today was their first time meeting the French students.  Turns out that they were put into groups of 6 students, three from each school, and were told that their assignment for the semester was to make a video with everyone in it, the French students speaking English and the English students speaking French.  In addition to meeting their groups, people from each school did a little presentation about their university.  Last week, we started a club at NYU called Coffee and News, where students drink coffee (surprise!) and talk about things in the news.  A large goal of the club's is to include French students at our meetings so that we can get their perspective as well.  So going back to the French/English students speaking class, during the NYU presentation, they invited all of the French students to attend our Coffee and News meetings.  In return, the French students invited all of the NYU people to hang out with them at a bar tonight.  

My friend Rachel, the one who's in that class, dragged me along with her because she wasn't sure if anyone else from her class would be going.  Anyways, when we got there, there was this giant table of French students just hanging out and it was a ton of fun.  They were all so excited to talk to us, practice their English, and just learn about our opinions and culture.  Turns out they're all in a very specific "books" program at their university where they are studying to become either librarians, publishers, or booksellers.  So of course, we talked a lot about books. (For instance, did you know that in the French version of Harry Potter a lot of important things have different names, like Hogwarts is called Poudlard and  Professor Snape is Professor Rouge)  It's also really weird to me how much French people know about American culture, but how little American's know about French culture.  They know all the American songs, all the American movies, and all the American books.  When I introduced myself as Ali, one girl said, "Oh, like Haley from One Tree Hill (an American teen TV show)" She misunderstood my name, but I still thought it was funny that she automatically associated me with an American show, honestly I was shocked that she even knew what One Tree Hill was.  It was really awesome to meet all of these new French people and whoever says that French people are mean/cold obviously don't know what they're talking about.  I'm looking forward to many more nights with them and I'm so glad that Rachel made me go with her tonight!