Drinking with the professor!

It's the end of my 1st semester of classes at Sciences-PO (all that's left is exams, and I only have to take one on February 6th), and to celebrate, we do something here in Paris that I've never seen happen in the States... we go drinking with the professors!!! :)

Now not every prof takes the class out to a bar, or even offers to have a mini celebration during the last class, but I hear there are 2 main reasons why you might go drinking with the prof:
1. Everyone in the class gets along with each other and with the professor, and the course was a general success.
2. The professor is really cool. (I think this is most important.) :D

For example, my prof for my Francosphere and Anglosphere class (the one where we talked about poo in Paris) actually hosted a cocktail party at his apartment for our class. I unfortunately didn't get to go because I was busy having my mini-adventure in Angers.

And my prof for my European Economic Constitution class (it's basically an EU studies class) took us all out to a café for a round of drinks! Like I said before, I've never seen anything like that happen back in the US... at most, the students might bring snacks for a little party during the last class (and ironically, that usually happens in my French classes at Georgia Tech), but here, we not only had a round of drinks, we also went out to eat fondue and raclettes afterwards! I expressed my amazement with my professor as I was thanking her for the evening later on that night, and she said she thinks it's necessary to have little get-togethers like this one because students should feel at ease in the class and with the professor, because then we'll feel more comfortable learning. I wish we had the same philosophy at home!!!

I took a couple videos to document the class's night out. While I was watching them later, I noticed how international the class really was. Just in the first video, you'll see people from Ireland (the brunette in the beginning), from the UK (you'll hear her accent), Canada, France (of course), and Colombia (Monica was in my class too). Oh, and the prof is from Budapest. You'll see her at the end of the video.


I couldn't believe it... a professor taking the whole class (around 20 people came) out for a round of drinks! How cool is that??


And here's a video of our dinner of fondue and raclettes. Raclettes are kind of like fondue in that you have to melt cheese and put stuff together yourself to eat it; I tried to show you in the video. And just so you know, they were complaining a little about the fondue because it tasted too strong, like they put too much wine in it.

Oh, and the nationalities here: Italian (first guy), Danish (girl with the short hair), Japanese (pretty sure you can find that one yourself ha ha), Moroccan, British, Hungarian, Canadian, Colombian, and I was the only American.

Remember that class I was telling you about before where I'll get to go to Luxembourg to see the European courts? The professor from this class will teach that one too. I'm so excited... that's one of the reasons I wanted to take that class- because of the professor!

Ha ha... I still can't believe it.

Bisous XOXO