It occurred to me shortly after I arrived in France that I might as well have been studying Chinese for six and a half years. At the airport in Paris, I asked a woman where I could find the train station and gathered two things from her 30-second response: The direction in which she had pointed and the word "bus." As I bought my train ticket, I was fairly certain the only word the woman behind the counter had understood from my sentence was "Lille." When one of the students who helps run my residence asked how long I had been there, I gave him my age.

Somewhere at Marquette, Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures Sarah Gendron is at this moment shaking her head and attempting to retroactively lower my grade.

But I can chalk those things up to jet lag, and it isn't all bad. After walking in the indicated direction in the airport, I found a bus that took me to the train station, and whatever I said when buying that ticket, I ended up in Lille. With a few repetitions, I understand most of what is said to me. In the dining halls at dinner, pointing at the desired items coupled with "s'il vous plait" works wonders. Moreover, many of the American students here are much worse than I am, so I sound impressive saying very simple things.

There are some aspects of France that have played out exactly as one might picture them. There are the small, cobblestone streets for small cars — a Volvo or a Mercedes that would seem perfectly normal in the United States looks like an aircraft carrier here. There are fresh baguettes sold in grocery stores, along with shelves upon shelves of wine. Everyone sports the same variety of long, dark, elegant overcoat, almost always accompanied by a scarf. There are small dogs everywhere: The street, shops, cafés. There are lovers holding hands, and often doing considerably more than one might think proper in conspicuous public locations.

There are also some things that don't quite fit into a preconceived notion. Take Valeria, an exchange student from Texas who was excited to be carrying her first genuine French baguette when she discovered that it had broken in the middle, which made for a very droopy baguette that flopped back and forth unceremoniously the entire way home. I've had to learn to pay close attention to the sidewalk in front of me, since the French take a laissez-faire approach to cleaning up after those multitudes of little dogs.

And then there are some things that are downright unexpected. Coming from Marquette's policies of visitation hours and gender-based curfews, it was a great surprise to learn that all university residences at the Catholic University of Lille are coeducational, including the bathrooms in buildings with public facilities. Co-ed bathrooms, co-ed showers. I do not know if it was more interesting to hear other international students react to this (I have my own bathroom, so I cannot give a firsthand perspective), or to consider that the French students do not find it the least bit unusual or uncomfortable. For Americans, particularly women, it has produced much scrambling to the French-English dictionary to look up the word for robe.

That's all for the moment. Take care, and remember those robes. (Hint: It's not "la robe." But you'd think it would be.)

Editor's note: Eccher, the Tribune's administration reporter last semester, is studying abroad in Lille, France, this semester. He will write periodically about his experiences in France.