And I shall hereby deem it "out of place"

Today, I went to the Institute de Torraine for my oral exam and I will find out where I placed tomorrow and it will determine my entire schedule for the semester. I looked around me and I saw many Americans, which seemed strange after being at the Alliance with only one other American, along with clumps of other nationalities. I found it sad that none of the groups were mixed... I think this is the tendency of man: to cling to what is most familiar when situations are unknown and uncomfortable. I know I do it, yet it seemed very segregated, in a negative sort of way... I don't know if I can really explain it. Maybe if you compared it to a high school cafeteria, like in "Mean Girls" or "October Sky"... I almost can't believe I put those two movies in the same sentence.
After all of that, I decided to go "home" and chill, take a nap, email, all that sort of stuff... And then the time came to go out again to meet M. Kevin for a tour of Tours. I went to the supermarché (aka grocery store) because I was hungry and I was craving Fig Newtons. Alas, they do not have these marvleous things in France, but they had something similar, Figoul (I think), so I bought that. I proceeded to the Institute and sat under a bench writing down vocabulary words that I needed to learn. The French Newtons where like eating chewy fig jam inside shortbread... Good, but not quite the same.
The town of Tours is not that big, but it offers a lot. We walked around for two hours, learning about the history and seeing the difference between buildings reconstructed after the damage of WWII and the older buildings that made it through. It was quite interesting. While we were walking down the Rue National, which is the Tours version of the Champs Elysee (sp?), we saw a goat. Yes. A goat was wandering in the street... a busy street, too. We all just stopped and stared. M. Kevin said, "How in heaven's name did a goat get to be here?" I couldn't have said it better. It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen.
Later, walking along the same road, M. Kevin was warning us to be careful when walking in the street because a lot of the buses run on electricity, so they're very quiet... and he said, "To put it delicately, you'll get a slight smack in the small of the back if you step into their path." I thought that was also one of the best things I've ever heard.
Tonight at dinner, I learned a lot about the Islamic way of life. The other student living here is from Lybia and practices Islam. The dinner table topic was premarital sex, go figure, and he was talking about how it is forbidden in his country. He then posed the question to me if I would move from the US if it was the same there. I was surprised by this question and I responded that no, I would not move because it's not something I support (premarital sex) and that I wouldn't have known any different. The topic then moved on to more about his faith. Ramadan has just ended, so I got to learn a little more about that, which was really cool. It struck me though, during dessert, that here were four people with different beliefs: Catholic, Christian, and Muslim, all sitting down and eating in harmony in France. It blew me away. It was one of those moments where all you can do is look around and say "wow..." Camal also shared his dates from Tunis... and normally I don't like dates, but these were the best I've ever had. Maybe it's because they're from Tunis...
On a different note, my classes start tomorrow and I have to get some sleep so I don't fall asleep during class... that would be a bad first impression.