Day 5: First Day of Classes at ESA

Today was my first day of classes at ESA. I woke up this morning and ate some toast with home-made lemon jelly alongside my French-pressed coffee. Claudine, my host mom, took me to the campus for my first day so I would know where it is. We began the day with a small welcome reception led by the Director of the ESA. After this, we began our first lecture on Agroecology and its various meanings around the world. To put it simply, Agroecology can either be a discipline which focuses on ecology and agronomy with sustainable food practices, or even a way of life that people choose such as organic farming. The lecturer was hard to understand, but we got through it just fine. After the lecture, our group headed out to walk around the city of Angers. The city is small, to the locals, but i actually think it's rather large, as it has about 200,000 inhabitants. The city structure is gorgeous with various shops, universities, and cafes scattered throughout the city. After our tour, we ate lunch at the "University Cafeteria." This cafeteria actually sereves the needs for all the universities in the town, not just for ESA. The food wasn't good at all, especially since I've been pretty spoiled with my host family. After lunch, the group returned to our last lecture of the day, which lasted painfully for three hours. The discussion was over feeding humanity in the 22nd century. The Director of ESA led the lecture and basically rambled on about global warming, unsustainable food practices, American diets, water depletion, etc. I wasn't too thrilled with the lecture because many of the arguments that were presented had little and weak evidence to support them. I knew in coming to Europe that many of the cultural practices would be very social and liberal, but the director just seemed to point out the fact that our world has a growing food crisis, water shortage, and overall heating problem for which he could provide no solution too. I think, in all, the lecture allowed me to have stronger arguments against extreme left-wingged thinkers, like himself, and thrill efforts to make radical changes. After the lecture, i made my way back to my house because i had left my bus pass back in my jacket pocket. For dinner, we had cold roast pork, carrots, salad, bread, cheese, and wine with home-made mayo on the pork. I'm not too big on the mayo, but everyone eats it on everything here. Tomorrow we start our first day of french claasses. Au revoir!