Jazz and skating April 3, 2009

As promised there is a jazz video in tonight’s installment! I went out with Sonia and an assortment of her friends on Wednesday night; to begin with I got the bus over to Sonia’s accommodation at Castillon – it was further out of town than I thought! We sat around drinking and chatting for a bit and then walked into town to St. Leu. One of the bad things about living in Castillon is that there is no evening bus service and the streets are small, quiet, residential with bad street lighting – not good for walking alone! It’s surprising (or perhaps not, we are in France after all) that the route between town and a major uni accommodation area would be so badly serviced. Anyway jazz at Retroviseur was great, we got there a bit after 10 and left at midnight; me and one of Sonia’s friends were both going to get the last bus back to campus so we walked Sonia most of the way to Castillon and then came back to St. Leu for the bus. Here is the compilation I made of the music:

Yesterday I managed to sleep half the day away and in the afternoon did laundry; nothing more exciting than that! Today I got up a bit earlier and went skating this afternoon with Sonia. It was good, didn’t really work on much but it was a quiet session and above all it was nice to have someone to chat to. After skating we walked into town and stopped by Alice Delice, a fancy cookware shop that sells posh pasta, coffee, chocolate etc as well as cooking utensils. Most days at 4.30 they have a short cooking demonstration in the mini-kitchen downstairs; today it was making banana muffins with blue and yellow lemon icing. It was fun to watch and we got a little taster of the muffins at the end!

I’ve had a couple of emails today from the International Office. The first was asking what courses I had been taking this semester because they apparently didn’t know, and had any of them been affected by the strike. I replied telling them they did have a list which I gave them to send to Keele for me at the beginning of the semester, and that all of my courses had been affected to some extent by the strike, but I could come and explain everything to them on Monday. Then a bit later on someone else in the office sent out a general email to everyone asking for lists of our courses that have been affected by the strike. This struck me as a bit late in the game; it’s like they’ve only just accepted or realised that this has affected us and will impact on exams! Anyway I will fill out this list and go explain it to them on Monday, and hopefully might get some concrete answers at last! Even if they have nothing to say I am still emailing Keele on Monday to outline what has happened, what I have to show for this semester and what I intend to do.

Back to routine January 20, 2009

I have managed to put a timetable together over the last two days with relative ease. This semester I’ll be doing 8 modules and 20.5 hours a week instead of the 6 modules and 16.5 hours of last semester. I’ve picked 5 from a mainly french degree of Lettres modernes, I’m continuing with the same two Spanish modules I took last semester and I’m only doing one small science module which requires just one trip to town for a 2 hour lecture each week, and there’s no lab time. I’m much happier with this set up as I really struggled with the science last year and felt very out of depth in the lab sessions. There are no stupid days on my timetable either; although most of it is towards the end of the week; only 2 hours each on Monday and Tuesday, 7.5 hours on Wednesday and then 3.5 and 5.5 on Thursday and Friday, I do have time for lunch between lectures every day except Friday, which will be a snack on the bus back from town in the morning and then a late lunch at 2.30. Monday and Tuesday afternoons are also free to do laundry or other things which don’t get done at the weekends.

I have managed to keep most of my Spanish groups the same as well, because while the rest of my timetable changed that one didn’t, so there was a risk my new modules would not fit with my old groups. I am still in the same translation groups as Marion, which is good, and I’ve also managed to keep my comprehension group the same which is useful because I’d already put down a date and subject for an oral presentation which may otherwise have had to change. The only one I couldn’t avoid changing was the grammar TD group, which is tomorrow at 2 instead of at 4, but hopefully this won’t cause too much of a problem. I hope not anyway because I can’t make any of the other groups and otherwise I won’t be able to take the module.

I got chatting to a group of American students today in the Lettres faculty building; I went to see what I could juggle around in my timetable and they were putting theirs together. I overheard them talking, trying to figure it out and went to see if they needed help because I remember I found it very confusing at first! It’s amazing the difference a few months makes actually; the first time I was searching out timetables I didn’t know where to go or where to look, I couldn’t figure out which semester board I was meant to be looking at and then the timetables made no sense. For a start half the course titles were different to what I thought I was looking for, then I didn’t know what CM and TD meant, and which of various possible groups I was meant to attend……in all it was very confusing! Not surprising really that I ended up missing out some lectures. Anyway I cleared some things up for them, but it sounds like they’ll get it figured out. Most of them are living either in Bailly like me or in Thil down the road, and since they’re taking classes from the same faculty as me it’s quite likely we’ll run into each other again.

The rest of this week is just back to routine really; lectures are back in full swing with the exception of some of the short modules which get started in February. I need to do a normal week with this timetable to make sure no problems crop up, get a couple of queries resolved and then I can send my revised paperwork to Keele so they know what I’m up to. Technically they could not approve it and tell me to do something different, like more science, but in reality if they want me to get near 60 credits for the year that isn’t possible. Ceri seemed to OK the idea of doing mostly French when she came to visit last year anyway so I’m certainly not expecting them to object. I will probably try and go skating at the weekend since I managed to bring my skates back from home, and hopefully catch up with the Cardiff lot who I haven’t seen since a week before the Christmas break, which makes about a month now. Then next week will tick around and we’ll be well into the lecture routine, followed by a super weekend in Paris for my birthday! Can’t wait!

Back to Business November 4, 2008

It was straight back down to lectures today, and although I was still very tired this morning I dragged myself out of bed to get on with things. First job was a quick trip to the supermarket to stock up on some food because the cupboards were almost bare after my week away – I had no breakfast, no milk, no juice, no bread, nothing but some tinned stuff and rice.

Then I had a lecture and found out about another mid-term exam in two week’s time. My next lecture was cancelled because I was the only one who turned up to it (out of a class of three!), and my final lecture of the day was also cancelled because the lecturer couldn’t make it for some reason. I tried to get some forms signed but once again the woman I needed from the Faculté des Lettres was not available. So all this resulted in me having more time to think today than I’d anticipated…not what I wanted.

Yesterday I was feeling very weak on the train back to Amiens but I put it down to exhaustion, and actually as the bus pulled up the road to campus I felt a sense of relief and of finally being back somewhere familiar where I could relax. I took this to mean that to a certain extent I have settled here, even if it doesn’t feel like home, and I hoped that I wouldn’t be tossed back into missing home like I did when I first got here.

Unfortunately today I have been feeling a bit wobbly, a bit down, a bit empty. I do miss Keele and Alex, and I’ve had to pick myself up today a few times after just finding myself standing or sitting staring off into space. I think it’s because the last week I’ve been with people all the time, and at Keele, I’d fooled myself that I was back studying there, that it wasn’t just a holiday.

But I’m determined not to go through all the emotions of the beginning all over again now. I’m sure the exams of the next few weeks will take my mind off things, Ceri our tutor from Keele is coming to visit next week and then I’ll have some more labs to prepare for…..the 7 weeks until Christmas will fill up quickly and I’ll be getting my suitcase back down to pack before I know it.

Building the timetable September 15, 2008

Well today was spent mainly chasing up timetables. I started on campus as that’s just over the road from my halls, in the Faculté des Lettres, Faculté des Langues and Faculté de Philosophie et SHS. All the scolarité offices were packed, presumably everyone else was there asking the same questions as me. I did manage to decipher the noticeboards and find my timetables for 3 modules. The fourth turned out to not exist this year so tomorrow I’m going to register on a similar one instead. I also paid a visit to the International office to deal with some paperwork. By this point it was nearly lunchtime so I walked to the supermarket, about 5mins away and stocked up on some cupboard basics, then came back to my room for lunch and to consolidate the information I’d got so far.

Next was a trip into town to the Faculté des Sciences to find the timetables for my modules there. I didn’t think this would be easy as of all the departments I’d dealt with up to now they were the least friendly and the least helpful. Firstly I asked at the main office on the ground floor and they tried to send me to see someone in Geology even though my modules are run by Chemistry and Biology, so I headed upstairs to see if I could find anyone myself. I found the Chemistry office and there a very helpful Monsieur who I trailed all around the building (including back down to the main office where the woman I’d seen exclaimed rather exasperatedly that she hadn’t sent me to see him) for the next 15mins while he tried to help me find the relevent people. Eventually he passed me over to an also very helpful lady who gave me the contact details of the lecturers responsible for the modules, since none were in their offices. Armed with these and having noted the details of the first lectures of each (from handwritten notes on the module noticeboards), I was satisfied I’d got all I could for the day and left.

The next job to tick off the list was to post a letter back to uni in the UK. This was very simple and cost me precisely 65cents. All that was left was to wander around town and take some pictures (which you can see by clicking “The Year in Pictures” in the top right corner), meandering my way to the Gare du Nord to catch the bus back to campus. The bus I use is the number 6 and I learned today that if possible I should get yellow and white buses rather than red and grey, because the yellow ones are newer and far more comfortable to ride in! Like most other forms of transport in France, it’s about the most efficient thing you can imagine. There’s a bus roughly every four minutes, if you have a bus pass you just wave the card in front of a machine as you board and it reads the chip. There are screens on board with a scrolling list of each stop and a picture of the bus moving along each one. There’s also an announcement for the name of the next stop. Why can’t we have a better transport system in England?

Anyway that was about all today. Tomorrow I have a couple of lectures and one or two timetable things to iron out, but I think I’ll be starting to get into a routine.

First few days September 14, 2008

Welcome to the blog! This is going to be a diary of my year studying abroad in Amiens, France. This is now my fourth day in Amiens and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster since I left England. I never thought I would struggle – I’ve been banging on for years about how much I love France and how I’d love to live there…but now I’m here I just want to go home again. I’m sure it’s just settling in nerves and trying to figure out unfamiliar systems but it has seemed over the last couple of days that not many people want to make me welcome here.

When we first arrived on Thursday I filled out some forms and got the keys to my accomodation, which is about the easiest and best thing about the process so far. It’s a nice, clean, new room and it’s starting to feel like a safe haven. The problems started once I tried to get registered with the university and get all my details to get online. Basically I got passed from pillar to post having to explain to a new person each time what my situation was. Every time I got told something different and sent to a different person. After 24hours of this I was getting really pissed off and losing my patience. Finally I found the international office and they registered me, I got my student card and some useful leaflets, and the information I needed to get online. I still can’t believe how many pieces of misinformation I was given though – if people don’t know they should say so instead of sending me on a wild goose chase!

I still don’t know when or where any of my lectures are – all I’ve been told is although in principle they start on Monday, basically the lecturers haven’t done the timetables yet and all I can do is go and ask each faculty’s secretary if it’s ready. A really efficient system, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The city of Amiens is very nice; it has a river and lots of open spaces, some green and some paved; lots of shops and bars and restaurants. Overall I think living here will be good but I have to conclude from my experience over the last few days that the education system is crap.