Today was a busy one, as I had three two-hour courses. They are all really interesting, and my French is vastly improving, making it easier and easier to understand the lectures. I have also been noticeably improving my speaking skills, which rendered me a new source of confidence upon discussing an assignment with a professor after class this morning. I then went to lunch with a Swiss friend with whom I spoke only French the whole time - and rather successfully I might add (especially compared with the frustrating attempts I had at full-on French conversations during my first few weeks in Fribourg).
With all this linguistic confidence in mind (not to mention my handful broken German phrases - at least I can now order in a restaurant), I brightly approached my most difficult lecture class, an ancient history course on Plato and the Laws of Athens. Normally I have a bit of difficulty understanding this professor, not only because he speaks for two straight hours in French, but because he mumbles like he has a mouthful of marbles. All my other professors are significantly easier à comprendre.
The first twenty minutes or so of class went swimmingly - I was understanding most of what my professor was saying and simultaneously taking decent notes. Then we delved into what I thought would be a merely background lesson on Plato's philosophical standards. As it turned out, the remainder of the ("history") class critically analyzed Plato's cave and line theories. In French.
Just when I though things were getting pretty crazy, my professor started writing on the blackboard. In GREEK. As he muttered in FRENCH. (Keep in mind he was facing the blackboard so as to continue his Greek notes, while mumbling significantly more as he was no longer projecting his voice towards the students.)
So we've got mumbled French, notes on the blackboard (and later also on prepared slides) exclusively in modern Greek, and then comes the real kicker: MATH. Now, I haven't really looked at numbers or lines or shapes more than practically since AP Calculus three years ago, so seeing Plato's philosophically-deriven formulas and geometric jumbles (explained in mumbled French and noted in Greek, keep in mind) wasn't exactly my idea of a typical history class.
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