day #87 - feeling festive

After a cheeky month-long hiatus, I'm reviving my blog. You can't really blame me, because nothing much worth documenting has actually happened. I've spent a couple of weekends doing things like wine and cheese tasting (very French), something called a 'Semaine des Zazimuts' which seemed to largely involve taking over the town hall and blasting music and handing out free condoms (also very French), and trying to wrap my head around the mere concept of midterm assessment, which is something evil and should immediately be burned out of public conscience. I also managed to head out to the Opéra, where we watched a Charlie Chaplin film (Les temps modernes, or Modern Times) which was accompanied by a proper orchestra. It was very cool.

But why should the blog crank back into action now? After all this time we've spent apart? The title is a little clue.
There's something in the air. It's the tinsel strung up in shop windows, it's the market taking over the square outside the Notre Dame, it's the mulled wine filling up my belly. It's Christmas.

a christmassy chocolate shop on the rue du gros horloge

 And I'm a total sucker for Christmas. It's not just the fact that Jesus was born - which, let me be clear, is pretty cool, and I've heard he did a lot of really good things with it - but it's the romance and the schmaltz that seems to appear the moment that the fairy lights switch on. There surely has to be a reason that the holiday season coincides with, to quote Doctor Who, the point at which we're "halfway out of the dark"? Just as the weather begins tumbling down to freezing point and the days start turning to night at two o'clock in the afternoon, we start switching on the Christmas lights and ice skating and buying each other presents and putting up trees. You get to give up on life for a week or two if you're lucky, and go home to your families and your loved ones. You get to sit on the sofa and drink slightly too much alcohol and eat slightly too much food and complain about how old we're all getting. I might be sentimental, but it really does make it the most wonderful time of the year.

the two-tiered carousel outside the cathedral

The only problem with Christmas in France seems to be that nobody seems to think it's Christmas in France yet. I know for a fact that the Edinburgh German market popped up around the 21st November, a full week before Rouen's Christmas offerings. And as for the Christmas decorations, then it's go hard or go home, my friends - some of my neighbours have bedazzled their houses to the points of eye-watering gaudiness. However, the village council has offered up this:

That, my friends, is the third and final Christmas light in my cosy little town. There are two others: A banner that says JOYEUSES FETES and a tree that they've strung some fairy lights across. It's a nice thought, I suppose. The other amusing thing is that as I got off the bus last night, having done a bit of shopping and run a few errands (and, of course, indulged in a glass of mulled wine at the market, duh), I saw a dude dressed as Santa Claus crossing the road right under that Christmas light. He had the beard on and everything.
A bit of Yuletide magic for you.

The Christmas market itself is quite sweet and deceptively expansive - it seems to stretch not only across from the Vieux Marché to the square in front of the Notre Dame, but there are also stalls sprawling all the way up to the town hall and I've even spotted the little wooden garden shed-type huts selling croustillons all the way down to the Seine. The vendors are very nice, and having them attempt to speak English while we try to convince them that actually yes, we speak French, is jolly good ERASMUS fun. The best bit about it, however, has to be the mulled wine - at €2 a cup (maybe €2,50 at a stretch), it's much more fun than the £5 mugs back in the UK. Heh, heh, heh. The British are such suckers.

couple of christmassy stalls outside the cathedral

Now I'm counting down the days until I can throw myself headfirst into the festive season. It's a little under two weeks before I head back to the UK, but before then I'm spending this weekend in Lyon for the Fête des Lumières with some buddies from Edinburgh who are also spending their ERASMUS years in France. I'm also attending a Christmassy pot-luck (a follow-on from a lovely Thanksgiving pot-luck spent with some of my anglophone friends), a birthday party, and there's still a visit to Paris on the cards for some Christmas markets and hopefully a few glasses of cheap wine before I go back to the country where I pay £7 a bottle. I'm also almost out of exam season now - only one presentation, one exam and one essay hand-in to go. Then I get to go home and start cramming for my January finals. Lucky me.

All in all, there's light at the end of this gross, cold, exam-filled tunnel, and I hope that you're enjoying the Christmassy countdown wherever you are. I will definitely be writing a little post about the Fête des Lumières, so watch out for that!

Joyeuses fêtes,
Josie
x

Day #66 - funfairs + where is the wifi

I am typing this from my deathbed. I have caught the common cold and have therefore been a coughy, coldy ill-bag for the past week. Some may call it man flu, I'm calling it The End of Days.

To make it worse, I was forced to the realisation this week that we are officially in l'Université de Rouen's essay season, except, unlike in Edinburgh, it's not so much an essay season as an each-individual-class-expects-an-oral-presentation-plus-a-written-essay-plus-an-in-class-exam-over-the-next-two-weeks season. Safe to say, peeps be stressed, and by "peeps" I mean "people with 7 different classes", and by that I mean me. Me. I have so much work.

an unrelated photograph of the sunset over saint-hilaire

Of course, I haven't actually been doing any work, because what's the point in that? I'm an ERASMUS student! ERASMUS students don't do work! ERASMUS students take long weekend trips to Barcelona for literally no reason and take instant photographs of each other drinking wine on balconies and riding bikes. That's it. There is no essay-writing. Most of my free time is spent sleeping or eating biscuits in bed, if I'm being quite honest with you. The rest is filled with trips to funfairs, day-drinking in cafés and going to the cinema.

My increasing laziness is only exacerbated by the fact that the French seem to have a sort of "you make it up" system. They can feed you as much information as you like, but none of it ever appears to be useful, and you end up waffling for six pages. The most common type of essay that I am asked to write in university is a synthèse, where they say to you, "Right, write about [insert topic here]," and you have to come up with your own problématique - that is, you come up with the discussion point, because the professors are too lazy to come up with their own questions. And the whole thing is in French. 

The other point is that the universities seem to be very wary of the Internet, as though it's not something that all of their students and professors access every single day. One of our lecturers legitimately said to us: "Why should the university pay me if I put your homework online?" Also there is NO WIFI IN THE LIBRARY. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE ENTIRE ESSAYS WITH A LIMITED COLLECTION OF BOOKS AND THE PALTRY 3G ON MY PHONE???? It's enough to make anyone want to run away to Barcelona.

I quite fancy Barcelona, actually, if anyone fancies lending me a few euros for a plane ticket. I haven't been able to find the time, unfortunately, but I did use this Tuesday's jour férié (it's a bank holiday. Sort of) to head down to la Foire Saint-Romaine on the Seine.

the funfair (it's much bigger than it looks)

La Foire, or the fair, was absolutely flippin' massive - it's been there since the end of October and it's sticking around until November 23rd, but it's huge, stretching all across one bank of the river. There are 3 rollercoasters and 14,000,000 opportunities to win a goldfish, as well as food stalls - I tried my first croustillons - and other classic funfair rides. I was there for an hour and a half or so and I only managed to get about a third of the wandering in. If I was feeling lazier, I would have taken the bus to get from one end to the other, except there is only one bus every hour and a half on the jours fériés so I had to use my feet like any other common or garden peasant.

The fair is clearing off just in time for Rouen's Christmas market to get settled outside the Notre Dame (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen, guys, I'm local now) and I have to say that I am possibly the most excited human being ever. Apparently the Christmas market is terrible, but from November 28th there will be a ferris wheel and an ice skating rink and mulled wine and that is all I truly want.

nice lil photo of the cathedral taken from the top of the funfair ferris wheel

 I hope that the exam season works itself out, in a way, because I've been occupying my brain with far more exciting things, like planning trips to Lyon to see the Fête des Lumières and trips to Paris for the Christmas market at the Champs-Elysées and the jardins du Trocadéro (the bit right in front of the Eiffel Tower). Rouen itself is currently in the middle of something called the Semaine de Zazimuts (me neither), but that means that there's loads of little things going on around the town; for example, I'm going to go watch a Charlie Chaplin film on Saturday, accompanied by a live orchestra. Pas mal.

I haven't got much else to say besides that. I feel like I spent my first 6 weeks here wishing I was busy, and now I am, I just want to stay in bed all day with a cup of Earl Grey and maybe paint my nails. My French has improved tenfold though, and I am a happy little bean in spite of the fact that I have about three friends with whom I can actually speak fast, fluent, flawed English. And that's OK! As long as I pass all my classes and I am allowed to return to Edinburgh for fourth year, where I will be able to speak fast, fluent, flawed English for the rest of my life if I so desire.

being just slightly problematic at the funfair

Hope all is well my good friends.

Josie

x

Day #59 - goin' home, and comin' back

This week's blog entry is probably going to be quite short because nothing particularly French has happened for the past 2 weeks, as I haven't actually been in France. Yeah, that's right, I caved! I caved and went crawling on back to the UK with my tail between my legs.

edinburgh: eternal king of autumm

When I booked the trip, only a couple of weeks into my time in Rouen, I was actually quite nervous about heading home. I have this habit of getting comfortable in a certain place and not wanting to leave, so I just knew that if I went back home, there is no way I would want to get back on a plane and come back to a country where there is no proper sliced bread and people don't make me cups of tea without asking and the dishwashers don't work properly (thanks, Mum).
However, I solved this by going to stay with my boyfriend for a while, where there is no proper sliced bread and people don't make me cups of tea without asking and the dishwashers don't work properly. Crisis neatly avoided.

OF COURSE I'M JOKING. But I did go back to my university town for a week before I headed back to my parents' house, and it was just what the doctor ordered. I felt like Dorothy must have after she woke up and realised all her relatives hadn't actually died in a hurricane in The Wizard of Oz. I stepped off the plane and my bus driver called me 'love'. I overheard an angry elderly Scottish couple arguing about pork pies. When the bus rounded the corner and I saw the castle and the Scott Monument and North Bridge with Arthur's Seat beyond it, I could have happily burst into tears. I walked around a lot, there was a Halloween party, and I saw a show at Bedlam. The trip reminded me that, yeah, Edinburgh's still there, and the people are (mostly) still there, and very little will change while I'm away.

Sounds kind of silly, but I really hate change, so it was nice to see. 

marry me

Seeing my family was also lovely, and I got a suitcase full of clean clothes (shout-out to my big sister! Yeah! High five!) and about 4,000,000 cups of tea.

And I needn't have worried about France being terrifying the second time round. I managed to navigate the Parisian metro system and get back from Charles de Gaulle airport in time to go out for my friend's birthday meal in the centre of Rouen. I think heading back home actually gave me the opportunity to step back and breathe for a little while - something that going somewhere new wouldn't have offered - and now I'm back in Rouen I can see it for what it actually is, without all that newly-moved-in jangly nervousness that clouded my brain when I first arrived in September.

Only downside: I missed a couple of classes while I was away, and it looks like I'm actually going to have to do work from now on. Bonjour, essay season. Ah, well.

Sorry if my blog isn't as funny as it used to be. I'm afraid that I'm actually becoming accustomed to life in France. Eeech.

Josie 

x

Day #45 - Why year abroads can totally suck

The title of this post is a little more pessimistic than I was going for. However, I think it's really important for people to understand what I mean by it, and, as I'm actually heading back to the UK tomorrow, so it seems only right that I should do a sort of round-up of my first half-term here in Rouen.

When you set off for a year abroad, there are plenty of pamphlets and websites telling you how 'exciting' years abroad can be - people travel the continent, make friends for life (the University of Edinburgh was particularly keen to tell me the ERASMUS programme's marriage statistics), learn more about themselves, find self-confidence and master their second or third languages to near-bilingualism. A year abroad is frequently toted as 'the best year of your life'.
Personally, I wasn't particularly bowled over by the idea of leaving all my new friends at university behind - they become your adopted family in so many ways, and leaving an entire support network was (and still is) absolutely terrifying to me. With the whole 'you're-going-to-have-to-do-Freshers-again-but-in-French' thing added on top, I was not too excited. Nevertheless, I filled out all my forms, got all my paperwork in on time, and started finding accommodation and courses online.

When I first arrived in Rouen, there was a sort of floating honeymoon period where I stayed with my friend Eleri (whose name should only ever been noted down in this blog if it is followed by the words 'my lifesaver') and we spent about two weeks attempting to complete our timetables. If we didn't achieve much - or anything - in a day, we would simply shrug, then head out into the town centre and sit out in the sunshine, drinking wine. I ate a lot of pastries. Once she got her wi-fi installed? Ah, it was bliss.

Then there was a sort of... slump. It came about two and a half weeks in. Two and a half weeks of sleeping on a friend's sofa bed, two and a half weeks of being messed around by the banks, by my university in Rouen, by my university back home. Two and a half weeks spent living out of the same suitcase. The fact that the days were getting colder and Autumn was closing in was just a cherry on top.
It was at this point that I started complaining - mainly to my other friends on exchange programmes across Europe and beyond (we may be scattered across the globe but they're very important and helpful when it comes to things like this). It turns out that this is quite a common problem. I even found articles online and blogs trying to outline the '5 Stages of Moving Abroad'. There aren't always 5 - sometimes there are 3, or 18 - but all of them suggest that at some point, things get really hard and gross. You see all your friends on ERASMUS exchanges having fun and don't understand why you aren't. You don't have the motivation to get up and talk to anyone, or go to classes, or listen to anyone speak any other language besides your own. What you really want is a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich and your old bedroom back. I quite like calling it The Slump, and not The Week And A Half You Spend In Bed Watching RuPaul's Drag Race And Complaining On The Internet, but they take exactly the same form.

RuPaul's Drag Race; beacon of hope for ERASMUS students everywhere

I didn't really get it. I was doing everything right - I finally moved into my new house and set up my bedroom as best I could, and I didn't even feel particularly homesick. I just felt... kind of... not right. It didn't quite add up. Where were all my friends I had been promised? Why didn't the French kids understand me? And I was way too poor to do all the cool trips and holidays and weekends away that the pamphlets talked about.

But about four weeks in, something changed. I'm not sure whether my brain kind of broke and I just decided to go with it. Maybe it was because I realised that I had to take action when making friends, rather than waiting around for someone to talk to me. Maybe it was the fact that, slowly, I was piecing my timetables and my courses together. But things got better. I made some friends. I learned where you can find fresh milk. I started going to classes. Things started to get good. I've got a little bit of that French laissez-faire attitude now, guys. I have friends who are willing to help me smuggle bacon into the country. I have places to go and things to do and it's almost taken a month just to re-realise that France is HUGE and I can go ANYWHERE I LIKE. It's a slower pace of life than I was used to with my hectic Summer and my squillions of societies back in Edinburgh, but the travelling and the new experiences more than make up for it. And I think that, if this is how it is now, then it can only get better.

But, if you're having the same deal, just remember that everybody goes through The Slump.

So as for best year of my life? It's got potential. But ERASMUS grant will finally come in two weeks. Then it'll be hur är det, Sweden and hola, Barcelona with my new friends!

Josie
x

P.S. I'm going to Paris today! Don't expect tourist photos, though, Meg's a local now x

Day #38 - Losing my English, hypermarchés, and my first grève

First off, let me start by briefly mentioning that lots of people have told me, over the past week, that they have read this blog. My first reaction has always been, "AHAHAH WHY," but the second one is usually, "Well done you, on your excellent taste," and then we all move on. (But seriously, thanks for reading my yaer abroad blob, means a lot)

I've got a couple of things to talk about today so I've been pretentious and separated my blog into sections. Here we go.

My First Grève

Un grève is a strike. It is also, apparently, a way of life for an entire nation of people.
I live in a small town of about 5,000 inhabitants, roughly 30 minutes' bus ride from the city centre and my university campus. It sits directly on a major bus route. I have a bus pass which allows me unlimited travel. This is great. Apart from when the bus drivers decide to go on strike.
After spending half an hour in the cold October air (ha, cold, it's 15°), me and my housemates decided that it would be much more productive to just... well, just go back to bed. 
I actually just sent my tutor an email explaining why I couldn't come in, and I got to spend a day catching up on my translation homework and watching La princesse de Montpensier, but I also couldn't go out for drinks with my friends and I am sure that the novelty will wear off soon.
However, it did mean that all my housemates were trapped in the house with me. Me and Francois had a lovely afternoon arguing over translations and I had a beer at 2pm. Killer.

jeanne d'arc having a nervy b after she missed her bus

French Hypermarchés Are Just As Overwhelming As I Remember

If you are unaware of French hypermarkets (or hypermarchés), then you really need to get them in your life. Why? Imagine your nearest biggest supermarket and then multiply it by about 30. Or imagine a warehouse crammed with literally anything you could imagine, and add more wine. Or just nip to your local Carrefour (I think there's one in Calais).
Hypermarchés are usually enormous and take about a day to get around properly. They frequently have entire aisles devoted to specific types of yoghurt. After spending 2 years shopping almost exclusively in the Tesco Metro on Nicolson Street (and, failing that, the tiddly Scotmid in Marchmont), these huge French supermarkets have turned me into a giddy, screeching child. The one that I visited this weekend had a fake market in the middle of the shop, complete with a sushi stall and water features. There was even one of those tanks with the live lobsters and crabs. French people are insane (in the best possible way, lots of love, please let me continue to live in your country xoxo)

They actually pipe in the sound of birdsong in the 'market' section of the shop, so that the French consumers don't feel guilty about abandoning their traditional outdoor markets in favour of a more international-feeling food clinic. And that's OK. It just makes the whole experience feel a little more Disneyland than your average trip to Morrisons, and that is fine by me.

In case you're interested, I bought some wine glasses, some pain au chocolat, and a plant. Oh, and a candle that smells like raspberries.

making some wine at the french hypermarché

How to Deal With Losing Your English

That's right. You've been living in your new country for about five weeks, and you're having a comfortable conversation in your native language. You reckon you've just about wrapped your head around using your new language every single day for the most menial of tasks – small talk with your housemates, telling the cashier you want to pay by card, asking the girl at the till if they have it in another size – and it's going pretty well. You're gonna be bilingual, you think. It's going to be amazing.

And then it happens. You forget the English word for 'saucepan'. Or 'pumpkin'. Or 'lace' or 'drumkit' or 'necklace'.

You've started to forget your own language, you absolute idiot.

This has started happening to me. I mean, I never had the best grasp of spoken English anyway – my stint on the student radio is testament to that (“My talk has gotten not very good,” during exam season being a particular high point). But since when do you forget words?

I forgot the word 'Sweden' the other day. I called it 'Swerst'. What is Swerst? It sounds like goat's cheese. It definitely isn't the most populated country in Scandinavia.

The other day in translation class, the teacher asked me to provide a synonym for 'common', and I blanked.

“Are there any?” I asked.

She stared at me incredulously for a little while, and said, very slowly,“Ordinary.”

Outwardly, obviously, I was super calm and collected – mainly because the class was full of French kids who now probably think that the world 'ordinary' is weird and nobody uses it. However, my inner monologue was the opening to Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence'.

There isn't really a cure for this, as far as I can tell. The problem is, the more English I speak, the more confused I'm going to get when I speak French again, and vice versa. I suppose I will have to get used to occasionally forgetting the odd word and making a fool out of myself.

I just ask that, if you see me, please don't be surprised when I forget the word for 'hello'.

Josie

x

P.S. Mum, finally found somewhere that sells hoisin sauce. It's great.

Day #31 – Calm down, France

I have long regarded France as a wonky version of England. There's a reason that, while students of Asian Studies have entire lessons on their timetables devoted to dealing with culture shock, the European students are merrily sent on their way with a cheery thumbs up and maybe some comments about bringing back cheap wine and salad dressing (God, do my family love French salad dressing)

And, I mean, yeah, France is basically Britain, isn't it? The weather is just as unpredictable, there are still things like hospitals and cars and hairdressers, and the French use more Englishisms in their everyday speech then they would like to admit (see: 'cool', 'alright', 'let's go', 'what?', 'dead', all swear words). Sometimes I swear I've just moved to Keighley, or Leith, except a sort of dystopian version where everybody speaks French and eats a wide variety of cheeses. But there are some definite differences that remind me that I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore.

1. thE WEATHER

WHAT THE HECK, FRANCE. IT IS THE 10TH OCTOBER AND THERE IS SUN IN MY EYES. SUN. STREAMING. I'M SO SWEATY. YOU TAKE YOUR HIGHS OF 19°C AND YOU CAN SHOVE IT UP YOUR- although, speaking of that, I was caught in what can only be described as an apocalyptic downpour yesterday and I had to hide in Lidl for half an hour. (I bought a massive tin of chili con carne and a bar of chocolate; it was a successful trip). I have also had evenings where I've been so cold I've had to wrap up under my duvet in two jumpers with the laptop charger clutched between my hands because it's the only warm thing in the house. Go figure.

LIAR

2. French people do smoke as much as we think they do...

...but they hate when you point it out. They get all huffy and defensive and say stuff like, “English people smoke too!” Like, yah pal, the English smoke, but the French smoke. They smoke like chimneys. They chew on the ends of those e-cigarettes at bars and in cafés, then switch to a regular clope the second they step outside. They have smoke pouring out of their noses even when there is no cigarette in sight. That's how evolved they are.

3. Some people are just walking clichés, and I'm at peace with that.
Yes, boy in a green velvet blazer eating a baguette in the campus cafeteria. Yes, French housemate who somehow smokes while playing the trumpet in the conservatory. Yes, elderly woman carefully cutting her own brie to enjoy with her wine at a table on the pavement on a sunny market day. You guys do you.

4. Nobody drinks proper milk.
For a country where dairy products seem to make up about 80% of everyone's diet, France cannot make milk for neither love nor money. Firstly, everyone seems to ingest UHT milk, which creeps me out and should creep you out too. The second problem is that the French have different levels of milk. Full-fat milk. Baby milk. That's fine. Then there's vitamin milk. Creamed milk. Aisles and aisles of branded milk. And none of it goes in the fridge?
And I'm the weird one for wanting to put it in my tea.

nothing to do with milk, really, but quite nice

5. French TV sucks
Literally nobody watches French TV, apart from my mate Safiya, who found the French equivalent of 'Take Me Out' (for all those keen beans, the direct translation of 'Seduis-moi si tu peux' is actually 'Seduce Me If You Can'), but she's English and therefore does not count. And also...

6. The French will dub everything.

You know how sometimes artsy people will say things like, “Yah, well, I prefer to watch old films with subtitles rather than dubbing, because otherwise it can really lose a certain je ne sais quoi in the audio?” That's me now. I have become one of those people. 

I went to go see '22 Jump Street'. It was dubbed. 'Friends' is dubbed. 'How I Met Your Mother' is dubbed. The last straw came for me when we watched the 1989 American film 'Dangerous Liaisons' in my Literature and Cinema course. It is an English-language film. It was dubbed in French. And the teacher put the English subtitles on the bottom. At that point my brain turned into sand and I launched myself into space.

I have more things to say about France, but I'm going to leave it at that, because even talking about the dubbing in 'Dangerous Liaisons' has made me so angry I've had to put my panini down. And that's very angry.

Next time: “Can you make friends in French?” (Answer: No. God, I'm lonely.)

Josie

P.S. Hi Mum, me again, that last line was a funny joke. I have at least four friends.

day #25 - settling in

Yo yo,

This is my first blog post! That's right, I'm 25 days in, and I'm settled/bored/desperate enough to start a blog. As opposed as I was initially to the idea of putting yet another ERASMUS blog out into the universe (there truly are bajillions floating around the internet - just look at thirdyearabroad, it's full of idiots like me), and as much as I loathe attention (ahem), I've actually seen some very cute blogs from some of my friends which have been really fun to read and have therefore inspired me greatly. So now I'm ready. Ready to embark on a journey.

Alors, bonjour from France. I'm currently living in Rouen, which - according to Wikipedia - is the historic capital of Normandy and is roughly a quarter of the size of Edinburgh, my adopted hometown. As far as I can tell, Rouen is really good for old churches and Joan of Arc memorabilia, and if you wander down the Rue du gros horloge at lunchtime on a Saturday, you will see plenty of Japanese and American tourists dutifully taking photos of the big golden clock (...le gros horloge. The French are very imaginative with their street names.) The pastries here are also excellent, of course, and I have been enjoying them round the clock in the glorious French sunshine (24°c weather in October? Get it together, France)

le gros horloge, a sparkly clock

I arrived here on the 9th September with 3 suitcases after taking 4 train journeys. I was tired and therefore incredibly emotional (think crying-on-the-train-in-front-of-strangers-while-listening-to-the-Disney-Tarzan-soundtrack emotional). My friend Eleri came and met me at Rouen train station, and consistently proved to be a total lifesaver for the next three weeks, where she let me sleep on her clic-clac bed in the living room of her gorgeous apartment - which just happens to be in an old listed building which has its own Wikipedia page, bien sur.

We started trying to organise our classes immediately, which, apparently, was already far too late - I managed to miss all of the introductory lectures and tours. Not that it would have helped at all, of course, because somewhere between the University of Edinburgh and l'Université de Rouen, they managed to write down that we wanted to learn English. Non, non, non. We spent the next two weeks trying to rectify this mistake. 

We did not rectify the mistake. There are still teachers asking us if we want to take English grammar courses. Maybe they will learn.

However, three weeks in,  I have just about managed to form some semblance of a timetable, and there's a heady mix of History of Art, translation and cinema. In fact, if my granddad would call it a "doss subject", I'm probably studying it. 

this will probably be covered in my history of art class

I have managed to get a bus pass, a French SIM card, a young person's railcard, a French bank account (even if they won't let me have the bank card yet, les méchants) and two days ago I even managed to finally move into my own house. It's weird and exciting having my own bedroom again, and I'm sharing an enormous 6-bedroom country house with a Turk, a Russian, and three French people - one of whom is called Francois and is the living embodiment of every cliché I have ever heard. They're very nice. It's actually in a village outside of Rouen and about a half an hour's bus ride away from the campus, but it's not too bad.

I cannot stress how nice it is to have my own space - Eleri was incredibly generous in taking me in, but it was very odd when I guiltily made myself the unhealthiest dinner known to man last night and realised that there was nobody to judge me. So I put more Swiss cheese on it.

I will leave this post for now, because I'm sure nobody really cares. If you would like a more up-to-date, hip way to keep track of the failings of the French administration system, I frequently complain about them on my Twitter. 

I'll probably update again. Later. OK. Babye. Thanks for reading!

Josie

P.S. No Mum, if the title alarmed you, I haven't been counting the days, I used a website.