This is the view from the media center of La Malgrange. It is the former palace of Stanislas Lexzczynski, father in law of Louis XV in 1736. The chateau houses the administration and the rest of the building serves the student body. The school day begins at 8 am, there is an hour and a half for lunch, but classes can run as late as 6 pm. During our stay, a number of the students were studying for the bac or were undergoing what is known as the bac blanc (a test that serves to give the students a taste for what the bac will be like the following year). One major test took place on a Saturday! Our students were impressed by how committed the students were to their education. During our stay, we celebrated May 1st, French Labor Day, and so students did not have classes on that day. But we also experienced several classes in French covering Impressionism, Verdun, Versailles (because we were scheduled to visit these cities as well as the Musee d'Orsay) as well as short classes on mots-valises and slam poetry. Our classes were housed in a classroom attached to the library, but our "correspondants" had classes in the building you can see from the window in the picture. Four of my students attended an English class and were asked questions about our country: whether or not our students worked, when they started work, whether or not they drove and had a car, what they thought of the elections, and more. It was an interesting exchange.