Well I’m off home this morning! My stuff is all packed up and I’m just waiting for mum and Alan to arrive so we can load up the car, then I’ll clean my room over and check out! Our Eurotunnel is at about midday so if all goes to plan we’ll be back in Cornwall by this evening. The last couple of days have been quite manic; we went to Rouen on Wednesday and did various things in Amiens yesterday. Fortunately the weather came nice this week so it’s been lovely and sunny. I know I should write a post summing up my year abroad but I can’t seem to find what to say just now, and I don’t have time to sit and stare at the screen until I do! Once I’m home and settled back in I’ll sit down to reflect and write something, I think it will be easier when I’m not still here. Just before this post there is one summarising my year abroad in numbers, but I think there really should be one in words as well! See you in England…
My Year Abroad in Numbers May 22, 2009
Arrived 11th September 2008
Departed 22nd May 2009
28 weeks, 6 days spent in France, including 3 days in Barcelona, 2 days in Brussels, 6 days in Paris
7 weeks, 1 day spent in UK on holiday
5 return flights to the UK
Number of washing up liquid bottles used – 2
Number of laundry loads – 19
Days/Weeks of strike action – 5 general days, 16 weeks of education sector strike; 2nd February – 25th May (ongoing).
Number of teaching days at campus blockaded due to the strike : 37; 19th March – 22nd May (ongoing).
Number of modules taken / exams sat – 15 modules overall / 13 exams taken in semester 1, none in semester 2 due to the strike.
Number of Jour Fériés – 9; Toussaint 1st November, Armistice 1918 11th November, Christmas Day & Boxing Day 25th & 26th December, New Year’s Day 1st January, Easter Monday 13th April, Worker’s Day 1st May, Victory Day 1945 8th May, Ascension 21st May.
Variation in exchange rate – from parity during the Christmas break to about £1 = €1.12
New friends made as a result of year abroad – 10; Marion, Katie, Alice, Vicky, Joe, Oli, Sonia, Blake, Nichole, Christine
One Week to go! May 15, 2009
Just one week left! This time next week I will be well on my way to Cornwall. I’m sure it will seem like less than a week though as I have several things lined up to do; tomorrow I’m going to town and meeting up with Sonia, we’ll go for a walk round the hortillonages and then in the evening there’s a “night of the museum” event going on which involves a light show in the gardens of the Musée de Picardie and an evening tour around Jules Verne’s house. Sunday will be a day of chilling and then on Monday the packing and cleaning begins, with a short break in the evening to have a farewell dinner with the Cardiff crowd, who I haven’t actually seen since February. Tuesday to Friday will zip by because of mum and Alan being here.
I now know I won’t have any more assessments or classes between now and leaving as well, since the blockades have been voted through again until Monday, and I wouldn’t go to classes even if we had them from Tuesday-Friday for obvious reasons. One of my lecturers emailed me on Wednesday about coming in for an assessment on the 19th, which I replied to saying I couldn’t do but that I could do Thursday, Friday or Monday. I also explained that I was leaving on the 22nd. Well he didn’t reply until today, and suggested an alternative date – the 26th! I honestly don’t know if he just didn’t read my email properly or what, but now we have established that there is no time both of us are available, so there’ll be no assessment for that. I haven’t heard from any of my other lecturers and I doubt very much I will now. Even if I do find an email in my inbox on Monday the reply will be “sorry, too late.” I don’t intend to rush work and I need time to prepare for leaving.
So at this point, I think I can officially call time on my academic year abroad! Next week will just be socialising and packing.
Rain, more rain…and some cakes! May 12, 2009
Well I’m not impressed because it’s now chucking it down and it’s forecast for rain and even thunderstorms in Amiens and Paris for the entire week. I was planning to go to Paris tomorrow, which had been the only sunny day forecast, but I’m not keen on the idea of going in the rain. Although half of my trip will be indoors or underground (in the metro and the Catacombs), much of it is also outdoors seeing various interesting and unusual architecture and monuments off the usual tourist trail. All I need is one sunny, or at the very least dry day!
I didn’t go to the AG yesterday as I needed to get laundry done that had been put off from Friday, and as the AG is bang in the middle of the day it was too awkward to do both. I haven’t heard the results of the vote but I don’t think it’s any different. To be honest I really don’t care at this point either; even if the blockades came down I wouldn’t go to class for just one week.
On Saturday the internet went down which was rather irritating and left me with little to do. I went to town, wandered around a bit and browsed a 2nd hand bookshop where I bought a 1940’s french travel guide to Great Britain. Should be an interesting read, not only from the point of view of the era in which it was written but also because of it’s French perspective! It even contains a chapter on Cornwall. I also indulged myself and bought some macarons (little round confections somewhere between a meringue and a cake that come in all sorts of flavours) from one of the best confectioners in town, near the cathedral. On my last trip home I bought some from the airport after having read much about them on a foodie/travel blog I read; MyKugelhopf (link in the list on the right). These are Parisian macarons I’m talking about; very different from macarons d’Amiens.
Macarons de Paris
Macarons d'Amiens
Macarons d’Amiens are more like the coconut macaroon cakes familiar in the UK, except they don’t contain coconut but are based on almonds, honey and fruit. They have been described as a “soft biscuit” and the taste compared to Italien amarreti. In contrast, the Macarons de Paris are based on meringue and are what most French people would think of if you just said “macaron”; it is the traditional form whereas the Amiens macaron is a speciality of the Picardie region. The Parisian macaron is much lighter, and consists of two meringue shells sandwiching a layer of cream. The curious thing about them is that although the outer shell is crunchy like sugar meringue, the inside is softer and more like a cake; I’m not quite sure how they engineer that! What I love about them is that they come in any flavour you can think of; the patisseries usually do a run of a few different flavours and change some each time, and there seems to be an unwritten competition among the most renowned names to create the most bizarre flavour! My favourite is caramel au beurre salé; caramel made with salted butter. It’s simply amazing, and I bought three of that flavour! To make up the half dozen I picked one each of fruits rouge balsamique, rose pétale and mirabelle. That would be red fruits with balsamic vinegar (amazing flavour, definitely a close favourite to the caramel one!); rose flavour, which was nice but too perfumy and I probably wouldn’t have it again; and plum brandy, which I haven’t eaten yet. They had about 5 or 6 other flavours on offer; some the usual vanilla, chocolate etc, and they had some other fruit flavours like lemon but I can’t remember the rest. When I eventually get to Paris, part of tour will be to some patisserie addresses highly praised on MyKugelhopf, so next week I shall probably have more macarons as well as some other delights!
It’s still raining heavily so I don’t think I will get to the supermarket today. I can last until Thursday before I really need to go so it’s not disastrous. Today I might do a bit of cleaning and tidying up, not sure what else. Indoor activities anyway! There isn’t much left for me to do until it gets to next Monday really; Monday and Tuesday I will start packing, do my last load of laundry, and give my room a deep clean so I only have to give it a quick wipe on Friday morning. On Wednesday we’ll go for a day out somewhere, probably Rouen, and on Thursday I imagine mum will want to do a bit of shopping in Amiens. My plan is to pack at least half of my stuff before they arrive late Tuesday, so that I don’t have to spend all of Thursday packing instead, just a few hours. In just 10 days I shall be leaving French soil!
One Week Down… May 8, 2009
… and two to go! Time does feel like it’s creeping by although I suppose this week hasn’t gone too slowly. Next week is likely to be a bit worse as I have now truly finished all my work. I wrote two short commentarys on plays for one of my literature modules and got them emailed off, and although I emailed my sociolinguistique lecturer at the beginning of the week she hasn’t got back to me yet. So, for the time being I have officially finished all my work! It remains to be seen if I get sent anything else in the next week. In my emails I’ve made it clear that although I’m leaving on the 22nd, my deadline for finishing work is the 19th as that’s when mum and Alan arrive, so any work arriving later than Friday next week will get refused I’m afraid! I don’t expect to be sent anything much anyway; perhaps one piece of work for sociolinguistique but the rest have either been signed off already or the lecturers don’t appear to use email, so I’m unlikely to get anything from them as we can’t get in touch.
I am hoping the weather will clear up a bit for this weekend; Sunday has been forecast sunny, no clouds one minute and then raining the next, but if we get a nice day I shall go laze in the park with a book. All this week it’s been breezy, sunny and cloudy at the same time and just now we had a little downpour, so it obviously can’t decide what it’s doing.
I didn’t go to the AG yesterday in the end, and it seems not many other people did either as the report posted on the Comité de Mobilisation website said that attendance was low due to today being a jour férié (i.e everyone’s gone home for a long weekend). Still, there were enough people to continue to vote through the blockades; by 231 votes to 145 apparently. No doubt Monday’s attendance will be up again; it’s always busier as people want to know what’s going to happen for the week. I also noted the results of Monday’s AG at the science faculty; they actually voted out the blockades this week. However this doesn’t affect me since my only science class should have been today, which as it’s jour férié wouldn’t have taken place in any case. It remains to be seen what happens next week; if they still have no blockades then technically I might have a class next Friday, but I’m rather disinclined to go since it’s only one class – what’s the point? As for assessments, it seems everyone is voting not to schedule exams at all and directing the blame at the government if it messes up people’s education. I also noticed a report of one or two lecturers on hunger strike (in Caen and Reims) until the government repeals the acts it pushed through during the easter break.
Haven’t got a whole lot of plans for next week; basically I wake up and see what I feel like doing for the day. Today I sent off my shortlist for final year Forensics projects to Keele (I recieved the list earlier this week), but I won’t hear which one of my list I’ve been allocated until September. I still haven’t had a list for French. I’ll probably go into town tomorrow just for a change of scenery; I haven’t left campus since I got back last week. Next week I’m going to go to Paris for at least one day; there’s a few bits I want to see and do, markets, food shops, out of the ordinary sightseeing and the Catacombs. If I don’t get it all done in one day I’ll just go back for a second round! I really have little else to do.
La Rentrée May 4, 2009
Time is ticking by oh so slowly it seems! I am trying to take my time over the things I do and only do one or two things per day to keep myself entertained but already I’m bored. Life is so much more interesting back home! I will go out and socialise a bit this week but for now I’ve got a few bits of work to tat about with. Yesterday I had a lovely long lie in and then spent the afternoon tidying up some loose ends; namely finishing another Spanish grammar test I was sent over the holidays and emailing that off along with the written version of my Pais Vasco presentation. I also emailed my sociolinguistique lecturer to let her know when I’ll be leaving and asked for a final assessment, and I emailed the Forensics department at Keele to chase up the final year project list, which it transpires is being released this week.
Today I let my accommodation staff know the date I’m leaving, and rather handily before I got there I had a note under my door (as did everyone) letting us know what we have to do before we leave, so I didn’t have to ask that. I need to give them back a form with my bank details on so they can transfer me back the remainder of my deposit; when I went to pay this month’s rent they said they would reduce the amount (since I’m leaving before the end of the month) and that rather than pay again they’ll just take it out of my deposit. Other than that I haven’t done much today, just tatted about and went to the AG.
That really wasn’t any different than before the holidays, just perhaps a bit more lively. Numbers were trailing off as people got bored and couldn’t be bothered to come and vote but today it was very busy as it seemed everyone wanted to know what might have changed and what would happen about exams. Some people have done an about turn and are now voting against the blockades because they don’t want exams to be put back to September, but as many people pointed out it’s already too late really, and it won’t change the fact many lecturers are still on strike and several administrative staff have “resigned” so organisation of exams is very unlikely to happen no matter what the result of the blockade votes are. Anyway, today there weren’t enough “no” votes to make a difference. Here’s the motions:
1) Motion to ask lecturers that, in the hypothetical case of exams being scheduled, they only be on material covered in lectures or other notes and that they not take place in July or August – passed by visible majority.
2) Motion put forward by the CNU; to refuse any evaluations of this semester and that no exams of any kind be organised – passed by visible majority.
3) Continuation of strike – passed by visible majority (now entering week 14)
4) Continuation of occupation – passed by visible majority
5) Continuation of blockades – passed by 442 votes to 291 (bringing the total number of teaching days that the campus buildings have been blockaded to 26)
The next AG is on Thursday at 11am but I’m not sure I’ll go to that. I was getting a little bored before Easter of sitting through 2 hours of speeches and debate just to get the results of the voting, although there were a few interesting moments. I can’t see the point in Thursday’s meeting though as Friday is férié and there will be another meeting on Monday if the AG pattern continues.
So there you have it; a rentrée with no lectures! Vive l’université française!
Nothing much to add… April 14, 2009
Not much to write about really, things are winding up for the Easter break. There was another AG today, and the results were predictable. There were two interesting moments during the debate however. The first was from a regular speaker; his name is Alex and he’s always very animated, hopping about and never using the microphone, he just bellows! He always gets people going as well and leaves to massive applause. Today was no exception and I wish I’d had my camera with me today to film his little speech. He came to the floor carrying a huge piece of masonry, which he proceeded to brandish above his head as he made his speech, using it as a prop. He said that it represented the foundations of a new and better university that they are building through fighting the government’s reforms. At one point it dropped it onto the floor (purposefully) and it made such a thud! He also stood on it and used it as a soapbox, in effect. Thereafter it remained on the committee’s desk. The second memorable moment was the president George Fauré’s entrance into the hall. This was about halfway through the debate, and someone else was speaking at the time and didn’t see the president enter (with a suited entourage of about 8), until gradually the audience noticed and began to applaud and shout. They finished their speech and one other person took their turn before Monsieur Fauré was invited to the microphone. He had nothing relevant to say whatsoever, merely reiterating his concerns about the “semestre blanc”, asking once again for classes to resume and barely hinting at the idea that he might also be opposed to the reforms. He was politely applauded as he stepped off to the side. The next person up to the microphone began to speak in reply to what he had said but he and his cohort were already quietly slipping out of the auditorium! This was noticed and people began to shout and boo until he was called back, and told to stay and listen to the student’s responses. He did, until halfway through the next person’s speech when he again began to walk out; this time he was let go but not without an accompanying chant of what I believe was “March to the Scaffold”, a movement from the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. It is meant to represent the scene of a man who is “convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution.”
Here are the votes for today’s motions:
1) Motion to send a delegation to a meeting of educational sector unions from across Europe: passed by visible majority.
2) Motion to send an open letter to the citizens of the Somme region asking for their support and a sympathy strike: passed by visible majority.
3) Continuation of the strike: passed by visible majority (1 against, 24 abstentions)
4) Continuation of occupation: passed by visible majority (45 against, 32 abstentions)
5) Continuation of blocages: passed with 335 votes, 159 against, 27 abstentions.
I have had a response from Keele on the idea of leaving early and their answer is no; but I am not happy with the small amount of reasoning behind their answer and so I’m still debating with them. One thing is now abundantly clear and that is that there will be no assessments in May, and I will have nothing to do that has anything to do with my year here; I can amuse myself, learn a new language, write, start research for my final year dissertations; but all of this I could be doing at home. I am not so desperate to leave as I once was but if I can avoid being cooped up here I will.
Lazy weekend March 29, 2009
I have taken it easy this weekend, as the title suggests. Slept in yesterday and this morning, and haven’t done too much work. I finished my essay on The Tempest on Friday, so ran over a final draft and then emailed that and the other piece of work I did to my lecturer. Also emailed my answers to some set questions for Sociolinguistique to that lecturer. With Easter looming I am beginning to plan alternative forms of assessment with my lecturers so that in the event of there not being any exams I can take, I have something to show Keele for this semester! In other modules where I cannot contact the lecturer via email (because they don’t use it) and I can’t physically get into the buildings to find them in their office, there’s nothing I can do so I feel I should do as much as I can where it’s otherwise possible. To that end, the other piece of work I made a start on today is my presentation for Spanish on the subject of the Basque country. Normally this would be brief notes because the presentation is meant to be given orally, accompanied by a handout with diagrams or pictures. Because it looks unlikely I’ll get to give this presentation, I am writing it and formatting it as if it were a written presentation so even if it never gets marked by a lecturer here, I can show Keele that I was doing something. After I’ve finished that I’ll be done with the work for classes, but there’s plenty else I can do – learning Russian and practicing some free translation between French, English and Spanish are all on my list to do.
Something else I got done this weekend was finalising the trip to Brussels that’s been in the pipeline over the last few weeks. To begin with I mooted the idea of four days in Brussels, then it got switched to Bruges, then reduced to two days and moved back to Brussels, and now finally we have settled on that – the train tickets are booked now so there’s no going back! I met Sonia yesterday in a hidden-away Salon de Thé called Alice-Anne which has Wifi access for the price of a drink; useful to know in case of a future internet emergency. We are going early in the morning on Friday 10th April and returning in the evening on Saturday. “We” is me, Sonia and her friend Allie, whose family friends we are hopefully staying with. They live just outside the city apparently, and have kindly agreed to let us stay with them! The train journey is in two parts; from Amiens to Lille-Flandres on a regular intercity train and then from Lille-Europe to Bruxelles-Midi on a TGV. The stations of Lille-Flandres and Lille-Europe are only a short walking distance apart; Lille-Europe is the international station through which TGV and Thalys trains pass to Belgium and also Eurostar between Paris and London. The reason we decided on Brussels rather than Bruges is because of the train journey; with the one we’ve chosen we are always travelling north, whereas to get to Bruges made less sense, since it involved getting 3 trains; intercity south to Paris-Nord, Thalys north to Bruxelles-Midi (not via Lille) and then Belgian intercity to Bruges. So since we’d be travelling through Brussels anyway we thought we may as well just go there. I have yet to do my super-internet-research-whistlestop-tour planning but never fear I will have a manic list for our two-day stop!
Tomorrow brings another AG, another vote on the blocages – so until then I don’t really know what to expect for the week ahead. I want to say that blocages will continue, but following Thursday’s negative AG I’m not so sure as I would have been a week ago. Anyway it doesn’t really matter, because the promised sunshine is back and I have plenty of other things to fill the next few weeks, so time will pass quickly even if I don’t have lectures. I hope the presidence gives an answer on what they’re going to do about exam scheduling soon, so I (hopefully) have some ammunition with which to email Keele and justify me leaving in a month instead of two.
Another week, another vote March 26, 2009
First of all I’ll tell you what happened at today’s AG; there were less people than on Monday, and the tone was altogether different. The debate went on and on with people speaking for and against the blocages, rather than about the positives and negatives of the reforms that they are fighting in the first place. It was like everyone’s got tunnel vision on the radicalisation of the movement and why that should continue, and they’ve forgotten about the reasons why they’re on strike. Nothing more was said about the “semestre blanc” possibility, except a tantalising half-comment about “exams in september”. At the moment I’m waiting for a follow-up email from the presidence on what their schedule is for catching up, but until then things seem muddier than ever – I can’t get straight answers from the few lecturers I’m in touch with via email, and the blocage vote seems to be weakening. At least, at today’s AG the margin between for and against was much narrower than Monday’s, and although for won it (meaning blocages will continue until the next vote on Monday), it looks like it is becoming increasingly unpopular, although why this could be when on Monday it was wholeheartedly supported I don’t know. Anyway I have two short video clips; the first one shows the size of the auditorium and the number of people there, the second is the moment when the blocage was voted through. The reaction was much much quieter than Monday’s, I might add.
Anyway, in other news…. Well not much really, which is to be expected. I have read The Tempest this week and am currently writing a mini-essay on it for one of my literature modules. This is part of the work options that some lecturers have been sending us via email; now many people are thinking about what alternative forms assessment could take in order to validate the semester. Over the weekend I need to write my Spanish presentation on the basis that theoretically there may be class time in which I can present it; if the AG on Monday votes to end the blocages then according to the schedule I could present it when it was originally planned for on Thursday. However because we’ve missed so many weeks I don’t know if she will want to do the people who’ve already missed theirs first, or leave them til the end. I briefly went skating yesterday but it was crap, too many kids messing about so I gave up after a short time and I’ll try again tomorrow. This is one advantage of having no lectures – I can do whatever, whenever instead of planning it round lecture time. On Saturday I’m meeting up with Sonia so we can organise our weekend trip to Belgium in a couple of weeks’ time, so I should have some more details about that by next week. Hopefully the weather will be a bit better next week as well; after our long spell of sunshine this past week has seen a return to grey, dreary drizzle and lower temperatures. Only reasonable to expect variation from springtime, but I do like my sunshine!
Mooching along March 15, 2009
Really not much to report but I thought I ought to write a little something since the last I posted was on Tuesday. The weather has been dull and grey most of this week but next week my forecaster is showing all bright suns and temperature between 10 and 15 C, so should be a nice week! Nothing unusual has happened recently; it’s all been business as usual with lectures and work. I’ve targeted the reading this week to try and get that finished and I’ve succeeded in so much as I’ve now finished all three texts for Littérature Comparée; Horace’s Odes, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal. Having already read two of the plays for Littérature Française I just have Le Roi se meurt left, which I should get done this week coming. I also had some lecture notes for Littérature Française to read, some questions to type up for Sociolinguistique and a mini-essay for Littérature Comparée, which I chose to write on Odes. So it has been quite a literature-orientated week. On Friday however I have Spanish translation mid-term exam so this week will be more Spanish-orientated, especially since the grammar mid-term is the following week and then my oral presentation the week after. I need to find out when the next strike AG is; it might be tomorrow but I want to go to see if I can get a heads up on the outcome of these next couple of crucial weeks. There are more demonstrations this week, once again on Thursday. I don’t know why they always pick Thursday and I hope it doesn’t disrupt continuing lectures this week. I now haven’t had a Spanish oral class for three weeks – it might even be four I can’t remember! Granted this isn’t all due to the strike; one week it was the holiday, the next it was “dead university day” and last week the lecturer was absent, but it’s still not good. I only have two more classes until I’m supposed to give my presentation. Anyway we shall see. The next few weeks should go quickly I think because I have an assessment each week; that always helps to make time disappear! I am also tentatively planning a weekend trip to Belgium for the double jour férié weekend of 10th April, so watch this space…
