A language state of mind

Hey there folks, it’s been just over a month since I last blogged, time is so stretchy that I really can’t decide if that’s a long time or not! This particular blog is more of a language-y centric one – I realised that it’s time to comment on my language skills.

First thing I’ve noticed with my French is that it’s much easier to change between French and English. I remember when I first got here, if I spent heaps of time by myself watching something in English or skyping in English or whatever I found it really difficult to speak French for about 10 minutes after getting out of getting out of my little hidey-hole room.

There’s another interesting thing I’ve noticed about the way language is learned. I find that I just use some phrases so reflexively that I’ve realised that people learn languages through the memorisation of complete phrases. Undoubtedly my French education has helped me so much with knowing what constitutes a grammatically correct sentence but all that knowledge doesn’t always come out fast enough when you’re trying to speak. Hence, writing rather than speaking is always easier!

In French, there are two forms of saying ‘you’ which is the tu/vous form. The former is informal and the later is formal. The language structure changes (e.g., the conjugations) according to the form you use. Because I am not French and I don’t have this inherent social hierarchy conditioned into me, I have a lot of problems with the vous form. When I’m simply forced to speak rapidly, I use the ‘tu’ form most of the time by accident because I’m simply used to speaking to friends. Sucks! I’ve had so many “oh shit” moments just after I’ve used the ‘tu’ form and there’s nothing you can do about it after you’ve said it :(

Overall, I’m also finding that I’m expressing myself :) It’s a good feeling! I don’t always speak perfectly and sometimes I have to explain what I want to say in an incredibly round-about fashion but I get there :) Most of the time as well, people can explain a word that I don’t understand in French. It’s always a good thing when you can receive an explanation for a word you don’t understand in the language that you are learning – means that your vocabulary is decent enough!

Long story short, I don’t know how to define myself in terms of being a French speaker. I definitely speak the language and I’ve had hours upon hours of conversations with friends in the language and for the most part it feels like I can say exactly what I want to say. But on the other hand, I am NO way near being ‘fluent’ as it were. Becoming intimate with a language takes a long time – certainly something very very difficult to achieve in only 6 months.

One other fairly big thing I’ve noted is the Franglais in my head. The French is starting to take over, so I code-switch and have half English/French sentences in my head or I’ll use English words with French constructions. Crazy stuff.

So basically at the moment I’m on a train headed to Paris to start a wicked Eurotrip with my best friend :) I mixed drinks last night so for the first time ever/a very long time I actually have a hangover and it’s blarrrggghhhh so I will blog in more detail later haha

I ♥ TECHNO

I really do :)

Hellos! 

Tonight I'm just smashing out a quick blog, talking about the weekend I just passed in Ghent, Belgium attending the frigging awesome I ♥ TECHNO show !!! 

Basically, going to a electro-y music concert at some point during my exchange had been on my to-do list and yet again I can happily state that I have done what I've set out to do here!! Furthermore... well... I used to watch some youtube clips of electro/trance/dance music where the scene depicted would be some massive industrial rave party thing where the strobe lights were numerous and pretty and the industrial-sized venue is just packed out with people dancing - and I always thought to myself "I wonder if that could be me there one day". Well, yes, it definitely was me that night :D :D :D 

Highlights: Digitalism and Aoki. 

Where have Digitalism been all my life? Seriously!! Their performance has got to be one of the best - if not THE best shows I have ever seen. The image I'll never forget is the finale of their set - where the synth member of the band hustled over and stood next to the drum kit and smashed out the last amaaaaaazing beat with the drummer with one drumstick !!!!! There is something orgasmically intense about mixing real drums with synth. Wow. 

As for Aoki - well... that man seriously knows what he's doing - let's just say that. His set literally took my breath away :)

Kate, Alex and I sweated like PIGS inside the venue!! So hot!! But oh so good :D :D :D 

So far I am racking up a ridiculous amount of good memories on exchange ♥

AMSTERDAM|SARAJEVO|VERSAILLE|LOIRE VALLEY

 Folks – I have had a crazy last two weeks worth of travelling and cruisin’ about it!!! I’ll start from the beginning.

Amsterdam

(22^nd - 24^th October)

Oh god – what a f’fest! But in a good way? Everything worked out. The reason why I went to Amsterdam was to do a tour of the Dutch countryside and its main dyke: the Alfsluitdijk! I burned with curiosity over how the Dutch actually fought the sea. Luckily I was able to get on a tour about a week or two before it finished for the season!

SO. My good friend Inés threw a house party on the Friday night and of course I partied-hard :) My bus to Amsterdam was the next day at 4:30pm so I had plenty of time to recover and ready myself for my weekend trip. I ended up spending quite a bit of time at Inés’ on the Saturday just chilling out and helping clean up (haha the house was a mess) but I left just with enough time to get home and get back to the station for my bus etc… well… that was assuming that the public transport was running as per usual! I found out too late that my particular train line was down due to a fire or some other reason. What was normally a 15 minute or so trip home ended up taking about 35-45 minutes with another 35-45 minutes to get back to the city centre on the replacement busses.

You know – I’ve often had this nightmare that I’ve missed a bus and I’ve had to end up running after it – watching it drive off into the distance. I always thought I was too organised for that to happen… well… let’s just say the vision became a reality. I got to the station at exactly 4:30, with just enough time to be running furiously and willy-nilly (and frankly quite dangerously…) through the busy streets of Lille after this stupid bus! But… it got away. I had a “oh god, wallow in misery” moment for a minute or so as I sat on a bollard watching the traffic in dismay. I was shattered! Honestly I paid a fair bit for my last minute Amsterdam trip and I was really really sad that I was going to miss my tour. L L

Then, like how I usually do, I pulled my shit together, made the decision to try to salvage my trip and headed straight to the sales desk of the train station – where I was lucky enough to pick up train tix to Amsterdam for about 54€. Still a fair bit but a very, very good price for an ultra last minute purchase! So this new train was meant to leave at about 8pm but then it got cancelled! I couldn’t believe it when I first heard. I was already sooo drained because of the stress, the party the night before and not having eaten properly. LUCKILY there was another train to Amsterdam an hour after that so I was able to simply replace my tickets without charge. But still. This new train connection took me into Holland at fricking 1am – I was supposed to be there at 11pm the night before!!! Strained, drained, tired, stressed: all suitable adjectives for Jess that night.

The positives of my trip however was that my couchsurfing gig went off without a hitch :) my hosts were very, very nice and welcoming and I felt totally fine staying with them!
The tour itself was also amazing :) I got to see a clog making demo, cheese making demo, some windmills (lol), the enclosing dyke (Afsluitdijk) and some awesome little villages called Edam and Volendam! :D These little villages were amazing… so beautiful and peaceful with really great quaint little houses! Nothing like the suburban uniformity of Perth. Arrrgh :D loved it!

I’ll mention a few little tidbits of info I picked up from my tour :) Holland has ummm some ‘created land’ from this century because they drained more water and voilà – more space. The first section, built in the fifties I think? Has loads of roads and was designed as a driving-area because back then – everyone totally thought that cars were the way of the future! The second patch of land was built later… maybe the sixties or seventies I think? Awareness of the environmental impact of cars was more prevalent and so this newer city/area is a public transport haven – every dwelling in the area was within walking distance to some kind of public transport stop!! It was fascinating to hear about how the design of each area at different times reflected the mainline thoughts of the decade :P

There’s also a region in Holland where traditionally, of course, everyone wore fancy costume-y things and as for the kids, the little boys didn’t get their hair cut until 4 years old and their costumes also involved a skirt! So how to tell apart the difference? The boys had some distinctive embroidery on their clothes :)

I think one of my favourite memories of the trip was when the guide was discussing the four islands that belong to Holland in the north. She was saying that during low tide it is actually possible to walk from the mainland to the island BUT to NEVER go without an experienced guide. I anticipated that she was going to say “when the tide comes up and you’re lost you’ll be swept out to sea”. Instead what she said was “you’re lost, the tide comes up and then you get problems”!!! Hahaha, what a euphemism! Because of course Dutch was her native language – it was just such a funny way to describe the situation! “you get problems” = you’ll get swept out to sea and probably die. Heheheh :’)

Basically – life in Holland would be soo gewd. Damn. Their cheeses are tasty. I rkn they’re better than French cheeses too!!

So yeah, I got back to Lille on the Monday morning TOTALLY exhausted but pulled it together in order to do a linguistics test that Monday afternoon :P I couldn’t really believe it but three nights later I was going to go to Sarajevo! TIME! I just don’t have any anymore.

Sarajevo

So I stepped into arrivals at the airport to be greeted immediately by my long-time friend Amar! I had absolutely NO plans for Sarajevo! All I knew was he was going to meet me at the airport and that I was staying with his friends. It is really quite refreshing to be able to do a holiday like that! Just gooo with the flow.

Just to let you know: food in Sarajevo is cheap! :D

The first stop was the Yu café in the Ilidža district. So quaint J It’s decorated in remembrance of Yugoslavia… They had painted a picture of the mascot of their olympics on the wall :p

Randomly: SO MUCH SMOKING IN BOSNIA!!! It can get overwhelming sitting in a café somewhere and 80% of the people inside are puffing away!

Then on the Friday, Amar and his friends still had some classes so I tagged along to their uni: The International University of Sarajevo. I sat in on a Turkish language class (I couldn’t tell the difference between the Bosnian and the Turkish haha) and also an English language class. Let’s just say the English language class was interesting… The teacher wasn’t a native speaker and uhhh… yeah. I will comment no more on the teaching styles of the uni.

That afternoon was delightful! Amar’s friend Lejla took me to ___________ park (I can’t say/spell it in Bosnian) and it was gorgeous… After all the cigarette smoke of densely populated places in Sarajevo it was so good to be out and about in total nature with fresh air J

Saturday I had cevapi! It’s a traditional Bosnian dish: flat pita-like bread with little skinless sausages and chopped onion to be eaten with some yoghurt. So yummy! I spent Saturday meandering through the streets of Sarajevo with Amar and Lejla and tried sheesha (nagila?). What a headrush! I also went to Sarajevo’s twist tower and had a lovely overview of the city from the 35^th floor!

Saturday night was going-out night! The club was ummm different? There were tables everywhere and no actual dancefloor. The music was definitely different!! A live Bosnian band was playing kind of traditional folky-type Bosnian music? The girls were getting so into it and busting out the lyrics whilst I was sorta bopping along awkwardly on the side. It really wasn’t my genre nor my culture!! Then after 1.5hours of that, they switched back to more electro-y songs that were mixed quite well!

Sunday was a really chill day. In the afternoon Lejla and I went to the ruins of a small castle and again had a gorgeous gorgeous overview of Sarajevo at dusk. :’) Then we had dinner of potato pita (so YUM Jesus Christ) and cherry-choco cake. I was so happy… good food and good company and a brand new city. So happy.

Versaille

So I was back into Paris by Monday night and on the Tuesday was Versaille day! I was so happy because as I was waiting in line to by the 25€ ticket to get in to the palace and gardens, I found out by chance that because I am technically a French student with my visa and student card – I got free entry!!!!! Bam :D

The palace exterior was of course VERY very nice. Very grand. Honestly though: I didn’t like the inside. It was soo crowded with people and each room was jam packed full of luxurious, over-the-top French antiquities! Such as paintings and furniture etc. It was overwhelming and honestly not that special-an experience.

The gardens are another thing altogether though… I spent a good 2-3 hours simply meandering the grounds of Versaille! The gardens are immaculate and numerous… and the trees are trimmed in the cutest CUTEST ways!!!!! Hahah :D T’was a good day after all.

PS I don’t have romantic associations with Paris so much anymore. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear ‘Paris’ is “cher” or “expensive”.

The Loire Valley

So I took the TGV from Paris – Tours just in time for the tour’s 9:30 AM start :) The three other people in the tour were actually Aussies from Melbourne :P

First chateau: Chenonceau! Gorgeous! Totally different to Versaille… the whole place was so tastefully decorated and not overwhelming at all like the palace!

Then lunch. I got to try six different wines in total. Wines here in France aren’t classified by the grape or method of production but rather the region in which the grapes were grown! The lunch itself was a tasting plate of different kinds of meats and cheeses. Yummy!! The freshly baked bread that day was amazing… so amazing.

The second chateau was Amboise – my favourite I think. It was a royal chateau so grand and airy… I mix of gothic and renaissance architecture!

The third chateau: Clos Lucé is a bit difficult to classify as a ‘chateau’ as it’s not too big. Some argue it’s really a ‘manor’. It was the place where da Vinci lived when he was in France!

Basically – I loved the tour. It was just so… nice to be out and about somewhere completely different to Perth where the richness of the land, culture and architecture was just another world…  So yes, I had an awesome mid-semester beak.

My next lot of trips to look forward to is a concert/rave in Gent in Belgium called I ♥ Techno, then after that MAYBE Rennes, after that, Cologne, Barcelona, south of France, Venice, Berlin and London baby!! Oh not to mention a ski trip in there after exams :)

…I don’t know how I’m going to be able to come back home… I’m just having way too much fun.

Quoi? C'est déjà octobre??/What? It's already October??

Bonjour tout le monde!! Hiya everybody…

I think it’s safe to say that I have been a very bad exchange-student-who-has-promised-to-blog-all-of-her-overseas-experiences-in-a-regular-fashion… But yes, I firstly would like to apologise to everyone…

Life here in Lille in the past 6 weeks or so has been sooo hectic!! I honestly just couldn’t be f’ed going into a state of meditation in order to write a meaningful blog. This is a shame, as I know, without a doubt, that I won’t be able to recall my experiences as clearly as I would have been able to had I blogged on a fortnightly basis or so. As they say, keeping track of memories is like trying to contain water in the palm of your hands.

However, the issue of my blog has been nagging me guiltily – and I HAVE been wanting to write this latest update so here we go :)

I would like to forewarn you that this may be a LONG blog… There is just soo much to discuss in many different areas! Should I employ the use of sub-headings? I think so.

WARNING RANTING AND STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD

The university admin/French admin & service in general

Oh my god. How to approach this land-mine of a topic… Most other exchange students here who come from first-world countries will probably agree with me when I say that the administrative system here at Lille 3 IS SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!! I have literally ranted on and on for days to other students and generally anyone who talks to me about how stupid, difficult to navigate and inefficient the system is here. ~I have to warn, this rant about Lille 3’s admin system is closely related to what I perceive of the French working ethos.~

~side note: French working ethos. AS a general, French service workers etc will NOT go out of their way to make your life easier. Maybe because it’s because of their shorter working hours (another separate rant) or maybe it’s because they have a national staffing issue?? Or maybe it’s just because they’re French and surly, don’t expect that because you’re a client/customer and therefore contributing to the employee’s livelihood that you’re going to receive acceptable service~

I will tie in these concepts of French inefficiency/laziness/poor work culture & practices with my experience at Lille 3. For example: the exchange students all had to go to this big talk/introduction lecture for studies at Lille 3. It was held in a lecture theatre with a powerpoint presentation. This lecture contained SHITLOADS of useful information. In French. With no handouts containing the exact same information as the presentation. Do you KNOW how hard it is to comprehend important information as well as take notes in a different language??? It still bugs me so much to this day that the Relations Internationales  (RI) Office didn’t print out any fucking handouts with the exact same information as the powerpoint presentation!!! I shit you not, after the presentation, about 20+ students surged forwards and overwhelmed the RI staff with questions concerning what was just presented. Then the staff had the gall to look frustrated at us. I was seriously thinking “wow, you’re really stressed and you’re now swarmed by confused students who don’t speak fluent French. Maybe if you fucking printed out handouts we could then take that information home, use a dictionary and understand the material in our own time”. This is just one example of how I don’t think the French understand the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness. I can think of a maxim that loosely says “the harder you work, the less you have to do”. I think the French should bloody learn this! Had the RI office printed out handouts and distributed the information in both a written and oral form – then they wouldn’t have a swarms of students asking in broken French questions that had already been clearly addressed!! The RI staff could simply say “read the hand out and come back if you have a question that’s NOT addressed in the hand out”. So simple!!!!!!! So much duplication of effort here in France ugh.

I mentioned earlier that the French have a “fend for yourself” attitude to service work. This first presentation at Lille 3 is example of that. I.e., take your own notes – we’re going to give you jack-shit in terms of any useful handouts.

 I also mentioned that I was not happy with the fact the RI staff had the gall to look impatient and pissed off with the international students for asking them questions that were related to being bloody international students!!! For those who will spend an extended period of time in France – you will meet those employees who will make you feel like you’re intruding on them, even when it’s their job to look after you. This is especially true for secretaries. It’s horrible to be made to feel like you’re wasting a staff member’s time when really, they’re getting paid to attend to your needs.

Courses

I was SOOOOO confused about how to sign up for classes when I got here. I thought I had to write my name on a list in order to attend a class. I thought it was a system from the dark ages but … I was willing to go along with it.

After much confusion, I finally realised that one cannot ‘sign up’ to classes here at Lille 3!! You have to look at the course guide (some were printed, some only available online, wtf?) choose the classes you want, go to the office of the UFR (i.e., the general faculty office), find the hours of the classes you want and then simply rock up. YOU SIMPLY ROCK UP.

Issue #1: When one is stressed, tired, busy and suffering from university administration culture shock, trying to write down the hours and locations of classes from a pissy little A4 sheet of paper whilst battling the 15 other students trying to do the same thing is FUCKING ANNOYING!! The university only released the hours and locations of classes 2-3 days before the official start of university!!!! What??

Issue #2: Because the university has allowed a free-for-all intake to the classes – teachers cannot anticipate how many students will attend the class. As you can guess – this leads to serious seating problems. My arse REALLY hurt from sitting on the floor for two hours. I suppose they are trying to give students the freedom to move around and try out classes in the first couple of weeks (as there is no roll for the teacher to call out before each class as no one signs up before the commencement of class) but there has got to be a better way!! (In order to finalise classes, one writes their list of courses down on a summary sheet and then hands that sheet into RI office.)

Something I had read about but not really considered when I left Australia for France is that courses here really do not have any structure or planning. It is at the individual teacher’s discretion to teach whatever they want and however they want. This means NO UNIT OUTLINES FOR EACH COURSE!!! This was incredibly – INCREDIBLY frustrating during my first couple of weeks at Lille 3. While I understand the argument “different universities around the world have different ways of doing things”, NOT offering your students a cohesive course program with academic goals and weekly tasks/dates of assessments is just pathetic. Just really really pathetic. Ugh. This makes life particularly hard for students whose French is a second language. If I had a unit outline, I could read up on all the topics in the forthcoming weeks, do some research and then be somewhat prepared for class the following week. With this current system of disorganisation and vagueness – I have no clue! I am constantly on the back foot with the my education and I have no choice but to wait til the next class in order to discover what the teacher will be covering. Also, not knowing dates of assessments is really annoying for trying to plan holidays!!!

I would like to take this moment to highlight how this lack of syllabi is an example of the French working attitude of “fend for yourself, we ain’t doing shit for you”. Of course, after what I had just typed about the French’s lack of organisation – you could argue “oh, why don’t you just ask the professor for more information?”. I would agree, but what that means is that I, the individual, have to do double the amount of work (i.e., taking out extra time to speak to teacher’s privately whilst knowing that they probably can’t be bothered talking to you) in order to receive basic information!! Back at UWA – the teacher gives you a unit outline and BAM that’s all you’ll ever need in regards to the course content organisation and assessment mechanism. Here – everything is vague and mysterious and it’s just tiring and pathetic to have to ask such basic questions.

God, it feels like admin at Lille 3 has this subtle sheen of “let’s make things difficult for you” and it manifests itself in various ways. I will give you an example that may seem a lil bizarre but is frankly very ANNOYING AND INEFFICIENT!! The ARCHITECTURE of this university is STUPID! For example, the RI office. Normally when someone walks into an office anywhere, for anything (in Aus) you walk into a room with a reception area where you can sit down on some chairs to wait for whoever you need to see. Usually there is a receptionist. Here at Lille 3 – there is only one door to the RI office where the two staff members sit side by side and the door has no window. This means that you never know if they’re busy or free. It’s like the architecture reflects the closed nature of the French service-work ethos! I have seen so many students get turned down grumpily as they’ve gingerly opened the door to the RI in order to just fucking find out if the two staff members are free or not. I hate that feeling of trepidation, like I’m hugely inconveniencing the RI staff by having to make them do their job. (RI staff are actually nice though lol). But seriously!!!!!!! The design of the building is so stupid!! This not-knowing if they’re free or not is so inconvenient for the staff and the students. Fark. It’s a small thing – but it’s small things like that that can really piss you off and make you realise that you’re not at home anymore… 

So I don’t like how the courses are run. I hate and scorn the deep inefficiency of the Lille 3 university structure. I often wonder how the university administration doesn’t collapse on itself. But what do I like?

-I like my French language classes. Well-taught and interesting…

-I like the language resources centre… It’s a separate department dedicated solely to helping students learn languages. I.e., there are language exercises and other learning sources available on computers as well as loads of movies etc. It’s a language laboratory and students can use it as much as they like! In fact, I have to do 6 hours of work with the centre as a component of my French language class. I think that’s super cool :) A language centre like the one here in Lille 3 is what UWA is sorely missing.

-I like the sports program!! It is essentially free… I paid 10€ for the semester for the privilege of attending as many sports classes as I like and as often as I like! So I’ve been doing volleyball and pilates and I have been LOVING IT!

Language skills

Well, it’s safe to say that my French has picked up A LOT. In a day I will conduct 98% of my conversations completely in French – and that’s with the other anglophones here in Lille!

I believe that I have achieved my goals in terms of language. I am still not fluent at a professional/academic level, and when other students speak too fast or when professors use big words – I simply won’t understand what they’re saying. Having said that – feel free to have a general conversation with me in French!! I am definitely capable of handling that now which is very, very satisfying. I have found also that since I am using French on a daily basis – certain grammatical points I have never understood before are starting to make more sense now – especially reflexive verbs!

Sometimes I still feel sad that I’m not fluent and that I can’t understand EVERYTHING all the time… but then I remember how far I’ve come along and that I’m only here for one semester. :)

Tip: get drunk in order to speak lotsa French without inhibitions! I was pissed the other night and my American friend introduced me to this random French guy who wanted to hear my Australian accent… The French guy spoke English with a British accent so in my drunken state I couldn’t help but imitate the British accent… Furthermore, I couldn’t speak English properly! It was bizarre! I was using English words with French constructions (e.g., putting the adjective after the noun, e.g., “I am speaking English British” instead of “I am speaking British English”). After that I somehow began speaking my bad English in a French accent and then started speaking in French entirely by mistake. In other words, after drinking booze it was easier to speak French than English. God I love alcohol :D

Social life

I love my Erasmus friends! It’s wonderful meeting people from Brazil, Spain, Portugal and America :D I’ve made acquaintances with some French students but it can be pretty hard maintaining the relationship as we only speak in classes… 

I wouldn’t say I go out partying/drinking every night but usually at least once a week :)

Travels

Unfortunately since it’s been a number of weeks ago that I’ve done a few weekend trips, it’s hard to remember in super great detail how each trip was. I have been to Bruges (very pretty, some pretty hilarious moments lol), Amsterdam (what a trip) and yesterday I went to Calais for the day (amaaazzing!)

Calais was super chillaxed. I saw England from the beach. So happy :)

Next weekend I will be going to Amsterdam again so I can do an AWESOME countryside tour! I’ve always wanted to see the dikes of Holland and ergo how a country can exist partially underwater! Also, windmills and clog factories here I come :)

I have a study break coming up after that weekend so I’ve made plans to be in Sarajevo for a few days (simply cannot wait… I’ve heard it’s an amazing city). During this break I will also visit the Loire valley to do a guided tour of its chateaux (castles) as well as some wine tasting :D. I will also go to Versaille during the pause as well! It is so satisfying to finally get to tick off these locations off my list :)

At the moment, I will have to admit that there are some aspects of this exchange that have left a bad taste in my mouth: that being the French working ethos and the lack of persistent and natural friendliness of the Australian people. Overall though – I am just loving life… Everything is new, different, fresh and I feel as if I am really living :)

Until next time (which I hope is not too long away)

Jessica

Ville de Lille (et Nancy!)

Nancy

It has been a hectic past four days since I’ve arrived in Lille but I wanted to write a quick rundown of my séjour in Nancy :)

During the first night in Nancy Chloe cooked us a yummy lamb (steak?) dinner and we ate together on her ironing board table whilst feeling kind of stunned by the amount of questions we had for each other! It was always our dream to go to France for study and we used to talk about how we could totally meet up in France… 3 years on and it’s a reality :D

The next day we basically went walking about the streets of Nancy, visited the huge park as well as visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts – aka the museum of fine arts. It was my first trip to a museum in my adult life that wasn’t part of a school excursion or something like that and I have to say that I loved it!!! I’m not a particularly arty farty person – and yes sometimes my eyes glazed over when viewing some of the French paintings from the 18^th century or so. However when we hit the glassware/glass art section I was thrilled :D But the overall effect of this first trip made me appreciate art and exhibitions! God… maybe I really WAS so uncultured in Australia? :p Like I said – it’s not even because I consider myself relatively arty farty or not… Art history and knowledge of artists etc etc doesn’t really interest me – but I have suddenly found myself very very interested in visiting museums and other displays/exhibitions in Lille and the rest of Europe! I realised that I liked just LOOKING at things. The exercise doesn’t demand any more or any less than you just perusing and thinking “that looks pretty” or “god this painting is boring”. 

I suppose the follow-on effect of my newfound enjoyment of museums and exhibitions has also made me realise that holidays aren’t just about shopping. Lame and materialistic – I know – but now I understand better how to get more out of a holiday experience. It’s not just about leaving a deficit in your bank account after buying lots of clothes and jewellery that you can essentially buy elsewhere in the world – it’s about soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying new sights :D

I started this exchange with the mindset that I would do bulk shopping… In Dubai/Annecy/Nancy however I was VERY reluctant to buy ANY article of clothing purely because I couldn’t bear the thought of making my suitcase any heavier before arriving in Lille. In those two and a half weeks of restraint – I sort of just… came to terms with not shopping. It was very easy. Also I am going to try to set up a relatively stringent budget – so I guess it was very good-timing that I’ve found so much fulfilment in arts and cultural activities that cost a fraction of the amount of shopping that I intended to do… I would just like to make it clear however that I do still intend to do SOME shopping hehe :p

Anywho. So Chloe and I had dinner that night at an AWESOME Italian restaurant!! Seriously – the restauration (a real word in French hehe) is amazing. Pretty much of all the restaurants I’ve visited offer great ‘formulas’ – aka meal deals where you get an entrée, main, dessert and a drink for some special price. It’s seriously better value than what one usually receives in Australia. Also the food is good quality :D This Italian place is Nancy was not expensive (unfortunately I can’t remember exact prices) but reaaaaalllly yummy. Yummy :D

Oooh as a side note – the French say “hummmm” to indicate yumminess – much in the same way English speakers use “mmmmm” :p

That night we visited Chloe’s friend Alison who’s an artist and had an exhibition on in a gallery. We ended up staying the whole night just chatting and eventually helped her pack up her gallery. In this time we also ducked out to catch the Nancy lightshow (which is btw AAMZINGLY cool J). Spending all night in a gallery with a local artist displaying her work is something I probably would have never done in Perth… You’ve gotta love just going with the flow!

The final full day in Nancy involved ducking into the Musée des Beaux-Arts another time to catch all the stuff we missed from the day before and more walking around town J We finished off that Monday with a nightcap at a bar in Place Stanislas (main square of the city). What impressed me so much was that on a frikn Monday night in a small French city one could easily step out for a drink with a friend! It was seriously nice to be able to enjoy that kind of nightlife.

In short visiting Chloe in Nancy was awesome :D I had so much fun. There is something liberating about travel and just… rendezvous-ing with friends from home just because you can.

Lille

Lille in the past four days has been a crazy crockpot of happenings that seems to me will be hard to describe.

*To any possible Lille-exchange students out there reading this – if you need accommodation in the few days before you can move into uni residence/other permanent residence, I recommend booking with the Premiere Class Hotel http://www.premiere-classe-lille-centre.fr/fr/index.aspx  in Lille’s centre. 19 PLACE DES REIGNAUX
59000 LILLE)  I would say don’t bother with a hostel – they appear to be too far away from the train stations and Premiere’s rates are about the same as a hostel’s if you book early enough – 29euro. The advantages of this hotel is that it’s a stone’s throw away from Gare de Lille Flandres – in the street just opposite the station so it’s DEAD easy to find (which means less less less stress), it’s clean and secure and like I said – if you book early enough it’s as cheap as a hostel. The main drawback is that the reception lady was a bit… meh sometimes…*

Okay – so from my hotel in Lille where I stayed for a night – I contemplated taking the metro from the centre of Lille to my accommodation but eventually decided against it and ordered a taxi directly there. I am SO GLAD I forked out the 20euro for the 12 minute drive over to the residence. My friking suitcase was 27KG!!! Having walked around this area after I’ve unpacked and settled – I just knew for a fact I would’ve been completely lost, tired, stressed and ready to cry.

There’s a front desk at Residence Triolo – with another kind of deadpan meh kind of lady manning it (am I seeing a pattern with Lilloise receptionists?). After I filled out a short form – I was told to head over to the secretariat across the hall where I signed some more forms and paid my 227euro deposit and received my key.

After that the cleaner lady showed me to my room, to the small communal kitchen, the laundry room (where I am now waiting for my clothes to dry in the dryer) and where the big bins were located.

Overall I think the residence is pretty good. It’s clean and well-located to the shops and uni. I have a TINY fridge! It’s like a section of a fridge within a bar fridge! No freezer, no oven. It seems to be pretty quiet here though… I was hoping for there to be an awesome social scene like I know there can be in the residential colleges at UWA but I’ve read heaps of testimonies saying that Triolo can be pretty quiet and I think that I will encounter the same thing. I believe the difference between the UWA residential colleges and Triolo is that at UWA the colleges really foster a community spirit – with orientation for the students who live there and a communal meal plan. This does not seem to be the case in Triolo. It really just does seem like a room where I sleep and a kitchen where I cook… I feel… kind of alone! I received a sheaf of documents outlining the rules etc of life in Triolo but it was all in French so I only understood the general ideas. But… I didn’t (seem) to explicitly receive names and numbers of Triolo staff who I could call in case of emergency… If something happens to me (e.g., lose my keys or something) I’m kinda fucked til business hours the next week :S I guess this is contrasted with my knowledge that the residential colleges at UWA really seem to care for you – with assigned tutors each night who sort of ‘patrol’ the residence and are on call in case something goes wrong with the students or if someone needs aid.

I’ve visited two hypermarchés here in Lille, Carrefour in the city centre and Auchan here in the suburb of Villeneuve D’Ascq where the uni and residence is located. Auchan (and Carrefour) is HUGE. It’s a two-leveled super shop which is like a Coles/Woolies plus a Big W/Target/K-Mart combined!! *clears throat* Can anybody say economies of scale?? The price of stuff is pretty good here so I’ve managed to furnish most of my room within budget! I’ve had to buy a pillow, bed sheet, doona, floor mat, string for a washing line for my delicates that can’t be tumbled dried, plates, pot, cutlery, loo rolls etc etc. Thankfully Auchan is only a 7-8 minute walk from residence so it’s very convenient to buy stuff!!

The topic of Auchan segues into my next notation about life in France. These hypermarchés are SERIOUS about security. Usually in Australia the bored-out-of-their-brain staff does some half-arsed check of your backpack when you exit the store. In Auchan I had a security guard put a cable tie around the zips of my backpack in order to prevent me from hiding stuff in there! The cashier unzipped the container of my doona and dug around in its white depths to check that I hadn’t stashed anything … :/ I guess they just get stolen from a lot!!

THE UNIVERISTY. Don’t get me started about the university!! I am so confused!! Cyrielle Rohart and José Lagos Lama who work in the Relations Internationales office are nice and overall patient but I can see that they get a bit bored/stressed/slightly annoyed by the all the questions that students pose them - but I kind of think it’s their fault as the whole system of enrolment isn’t really that clear!! (Allowing leeway for the fact that I don’t fully understand everything they’re saying yet…) Like past students have noted – things in general just don’t seem as organised… They had a massive orientation-ish type presentation on Thursday but we all had to take notes by hand – why couldn’t thye have printed out all the info they gave us? (Which was on important stuff like how to enrol etc). I understand it kills a few trees but… when you’re a foreign student trying to get by … Notes with full info would help!

As far as I can tell, I literally ROCK UP to the units I want to take, write down the name and details of the class on a summary sheet and then hand that into the Relations Internationale Office…. It’s so bizarre, I’m used to pre-enrolling/signing up for classes where the teacher actually expects me :S  Oh well – we’ll see how it goes!

My actual classes don’t actually start until the 19^th of September – but I have twenty hours of intensive French starting from the 5^th of September for a week – four hours a day. Sounds good! :D But I mean seriously – going back to the whole (relative) disorganisation of Lille 3 – why can’t they give us a timetable of events for foreign students?? Cause I had no idea I had to do the actual INTENSIVE course before the extensive course which is 2 hours per week! I’m so confused! It feels like the French way of doing things is just find out as you go… whereas I’m way more used to a university system where everything is planned out step by step. Hell UWA has their academic calendars out 2-3 years in advance! Lille only released theirs about 2 months before the new semester! Oh well – one learns in a new country! In my heart I believe things will work out.

One other thing I’ve noticed in France are that service workers – especially in supermarkets and hypermarchés do not give a toss about you. In Australia – generally staff are chipper and put your needs first. In France – I swear to god people will just ignore you if it conveniences them. I asked an Auchan worker where the soy milk was and she just looked frightened and shook her head! Wtf?? In Australia that person would’ve stopped what they were doing to either point/show you where the product was or they’d get someone else to help you. When in France – fend for yourself.

Language wise? It’s hard! I have a woefully pathetic vocabulary and when the situation gets stressful my French breaks down completely. I think during the course of my intensive French lessons next week I am going to have to literally look up a website that lists everyday verbs/vocab and learn it. It’s ridiculous trying to have a conversation with someone and stop frequently to gesture stupidly and say “comment dire?” (how to say) and “je sais pas le mot en français” (I don’t know the word in French). Expressions get me as well! I can’t think of any examples at the moment –but it can be SERIOUSLY difficult trying to express complex ideas such as enrolment and one’s feelings…

Anyway I think I should leave my blog here for now – it has been terribly long but there’s been so much happening gah!! Next time I blog I hope things will be more calm :)

A plus tard

Jessica

Post Annecy - in Nancy

Bonjour tout le monde!

So now I am in the city of Nancy visiting my friend Chloe from UWA who is in France doing her exchange at Sciences Po and havin' a u-beaut time :D There was something so liberating when I was organising my itinerary for France to be able to go "yup I'm going to Annecy for two weeks and then Nancy for three nights and then I'll go Lille" :)

I guess I should start with finishing up some thoughts on Annecy. I was incredibly lucky I went to Annecy at the time that I did because I managed to catch the tail end of summer in the beautiful Haute-Savoie region of the south-eastern Rhône-Alpes of France. For a week and a half I was enjoying hot hot weather - 30 degrees everyday! Wewp :D Then, In the middle of the 2nd week - I got caught in a freak hailstorm at 6 in the evening walking home from school... it was scary stuff! A bit exciting too. A few huge trees got struck by lightning and felled too... It was insane how the weather had changed so much in an instant! After that short but violent storm passed - the weather gods decided to introduce Autumn - around the time I was preparing to leave.

In an earlier post - I blogged about how good my classes were. I guess I need to make a slight revision to that statement. Overall it was good - but I felt that in the new group I was placed in I didn't get to do enough grammar - and one of the teachers I had was somewhat harebrained - which made following her lesson difficult. Poo. I think overall the classes did help me - but perhaps my advice is if you want to do classes at IFALPES - speak to the school about your goals from the classes. E.g., if you want to do more conversation - the upper level groups are better but if you're more interested in revising grammar points - perhaps ask to remain in a lower level class - even if they think you're better than it.

My other point about IFALPES is that the quality of the building isn't too great... simply because the walls were very, very thin and if the class next door was being noisy - it could seriously cut into your concentration. Also it would've been nice if the premises had air-con...

But overall - Annecy was amazing - my host family were SO genuinely kind. My decision to come to France is just... wow. Such a good decision.

Now I'm chillin' out in Chloe's apartment in Nancy. Nancy is a slightly bigger, commercial city than Annecy but the atmosphere is very... understated. In a nice way. It's quieter, more laid-back than Annecy - purely because Annecy in summer is very toursity and bustling - with people packing the streets near the canals having lunch etc. Nancy seems a bit slower in comparison - which isn't a bad thing. Oh and of course - it has gorgeous architecture :)

I can't wait to get to Lille though. Not because I'm not enjoying my lil trips in Annecy and Nancy - but because I can't wait to have my own space so I can just EMPTY MY SUITCASE AND NOT HAVE TO LUG THE STUPID THING AROUND AGAIN FOR ANOTHER 6 MONTHS!!! I seriously... I was so lucky lots of people helped me with my suitcase on the train and out about on stairs... I literally couldn't lift 27kg worth of luggage on my own.

A bientôt :)

Jessica

Ma première semaine à Annecy, France

So currently I am just into my 2nd week of sunny Annecy in the south-eastern Haute-Savoie region of France and having a very good (very hot) time!

Annecy first impressions
Although I had seen photos of Annecy before and knew that it was an idyllic holiday village with a gorgeous lake and sweeping mountains as a backdrop - I don't think I actually fully comprehended how gorgeous and idyllic it really is! My host mum is super nice - and so are her two sisters and mum who are visiting as well as her son. The apartment that I'm living in is awesome :) It's a small two-bedroom apartment that my host mum rents just a stone's throw away from the lake (it's possible to see the lake from the balcony) that's filled with beautiful knick-knacks. I think the thing that strikes me about this apartment is that it's filled with stuff but my host mum has managed to make it look all so neat and well put-together! I mean - my room is constantly filled with stuff but it just looks.. ...like there's crap everywhere haha.


I think the best way to describe Annecy is that it's a really, really big town. I wouldn't exactly classify it as a city because it's still got this sleepy-summer-town vibe to it but it's certainly got infrastructure like a shopping district, a handful of supermarkets and car-dealerships as well as a functional public transport system.

Furthermore Annecy's going to host the 2018 winter olympics so I can't wait to watch the telly then and be able to say "I've been there!!"


Weather

 Hothothothothothot HOT! Lol. For the week that I've been here already it has not dropped below 30° celsius !! So good hehe. Sometimes it gets a bit baking to just be wandering the streets at 2PM in the afternoon. I think the weather is something else I did not expect to find in France. I mean I knew it was summer in Europe still and I know that parts of France can have quite a Mediterranean climate but I honestly not expecting how hot it was going to be here - especially since people have always told me how gorgeous Annecy looks in the winter! (Not to mention the fact that Annecy will be hosting 2018's winter olympic games.) It kind of makes me wish that Perth could have this extreme variation in the differences in climate. All we've got is HOT and then eh it's a bit cold - but no snow for me to go snowboarding (or any mountains for that either...) 

Food & drink
Overall food has been pretty good here. I haven't had anything MINDBLOWINGLY OMG WHERE HAS THIS CUISINE BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE kind of meals but yah - overall it's been good. I've been eating lot-sa baguettes broken up into little pieces - the type where it's quite hard on the outside but squishy on the inside. It's been good but maybe I just haven't been that much of a bread fan because I haven't orgasmed over it or anything like that.

I had the best restaurant-steak of my LIFE at a restaurant by the canals in Annecy. Seriously - restaurants in Perth don't know how to cook steak according to rare-med-well!! My medium steak ACTUALLY CAME OUT AS A MEDIUM STEAK!!!!! And it was soooooo delicious. So delicious. (and big)

Also I think here in France they really like their pommes de terre - potatoes! I have to be careful about what I eat with all these carbohydrates like bread and potates lying in sinisterely tasty wait on the dinner table!!

Not to mention I also had a serve of six escargots for an entrée to my delicious steak dinner! Heheh. They were on the good side of interesting - marinated in some green herbs and spices. A French teacher once said to me that if you like eating squid/calamari - you'll be able to handle escargot. And he was right. My next visit to a restaurant will entail me trying some cuisses de grenouille - frogs legs!

Wine. MmmmmmmmmMMMMMmmmm wine. The rosés, champagnes and reds I've tasted so far have been amayyyzing! Yummy. That is all haha. Actually as I type - my host grandma just offered me some cidre rosé - which is basically rosé cider and omg it's AMAZING. I have never tasted anything like that!!!!!! It's sweet but zingy at the same time. Yumyumyumyumyum


People/culture
Overall all the people that I have met in Annecy have been pretty friendly - with an exception of a few grumps who can't be bothered tolerating my slow French. I totally faux-pas'd on my first day in Annecy *facepalm* we had just sat down from lunch after I had been picked up from the train station and I had already started sipping my wine before the toasts!! Faux pas! Glass chinking and toasting is a pretty big deal. Before each meal a santé! is proposed and everyone has to chink glasses with everyone else whilst maintaining eye-contact and saying santé to each other - which means 'health'.

I guess I have already experienced a little bit of that European 'openness' that you hear about - how no topic is sacred and personal questions can be asked from day one. Literally after day 3 or so my host mum's sisters were already asking me if I had put on weight from eating the new food! I just said that I didn't know and rolled with it but I did note that it was something an Australian family probably wouldn't ask so casually to a stranger.



Language/language school
So as you may or may not know - I am actually in Annecy because I have enrolled into a private language course at IFALPES - aka Institut Française des Alpes for two weeks. In short - the language school/homestay decision was a frigging GOOD idea. My classes range from a little-easy to appropriately challenging which is just an awesome mix of grammar revision and challenging grammatical and conversational application of my French knowledge!! I was initially placed into group 4 (out of 8) but after two days it was very obvious to the teachers that the content was too easy for me... I mean at that stage they were learning HOW to form the conditional. Um. Yeah. After 3 years of university-level French I had already had the formation of various grammatical usages down pat - so then I got shifted up to group 5 where they're still revising grammar in general but adopting its usage in more complicated scenarios. E.g., on Friday I had to read an article on voting/politics in France and then we had a 2 hour discussion about it with the class!! Awesome :)


My last point there about 'awesome' segues nicely into what I think about the teaching quality at IFALPES. Basically - I think it's very, very good. I think it's got to do with the fact it's a private school so thus there is enough money there to hire plenty-o French teachers. Also - with my intensive 4-hour classes a day there is PLENTY OF TIME TO DO STUFF!!!!!! I think this is what's made the me the most happy. When I get a sheet with exercises to do in class - I actually have time to do it! As in the whole sheet - without stressing and clock-watching. The atmosphere in the classes is definitely studious but also a lot of fun because we have time to crunch out sentences and exercises and then time afterward to DISCUSS all our questions and concerns!

One thing in particular that I have noticed is that maybe half of the students here learning French already know English as a 2nd language. From this I can gather that having knowledge of English takes precedence over French...

One problem with my French that I've always thought I had was that my grammatical and writing skills in general were waaay too advanced for my speaking and listening skills and now that I'm in France I'm noticing it's absolutely true. I believe I was placed into group 4 based on the oral test where I had to respond to questions and answer but I believe I was moved up into group 5 after two days because I essentially blitzed a small grammar test they gave me. I was finished before anyone else... There is very little else I can do at the moment than work hard to fix up this disparity in my skills.

So how is that fixing up the disparity working for me at the moment? Overall - well. I have definitely been speaking a loooot a lot a lot of French since I've arrived. My host family speak no English at all - so that's been really great for making me use my French. However it's been really hard as well. When they speak slowly/normally/clearly it's very possible for me to understand what is going on and hold a conversation - however they're also a close knit family who at times speak French at a ridiculously break-neck pace whilst I stare on glossy-eyed and slightly drunk during meals from all the various wines I've been drinking haha.

What has ABSOLUTELY improved for me is that I have lost the inherent shyness I had for speaking French since I started learning the language. In Perth I suffered an inferiority complex where I felt that I could not speak French out of fear I'd be ridiculed for speaking wrong (which I knew that I would absolutely do). When in France - you blab out what you want to say otherwise you don't say anything at all!! After ONE WEEK of solid French speaking I feel that I could return to UWA and hold a conversation with my teachers in French non-stop. Although I am 10000km away from being fluent in French - it really has dawned on me that I am able to speak some French and hold a half-way decent conversation. I have all the tools for it stored in my head...



The other thing I have really enjoyed about my enrollment at IFALPES is that all the other students at my level are in the same boat as me... They all have some decent level of French and are serious about improving their French. For the first time in my life I have conducted whole days of continuous conversation in French with other people whose native language is actually English. It is seriously so amazing and it's made me so happy. So happy :)

So now I have another week in beautiful Annecy ahead of me and after that 3 days in Nancy with my friend Chloe from uni :) My confidence in French has leaped up wonderfully and now I am hoping that my vocab and listening skills will too. Sometimes I feel a bit down because my French family speak sooo fast and I don't understand them but then I remember this is the most French I have ever spoken in my life and that I have only been here for 1 week. I still have another 6½ months in here :)

As a passing note - I received an e-mail from Lille 3 saying that they've received my e-mail about my change-in-date for arriving at Résidence Triolo - so now I don't have to stress about that. I am seeeeeeriously keen for my upcoming semester in Lille!!

Jessica

A Paris pour la première fois

Mesdames et monsieurs

I’m smashing out a small blog entry on the 3.5 hour train trip from Paris (Gare de Lyon) to the regional town/city Annecy.

So after a horrific plane trip from Dubai to Paris where the little boy in the seat next to me soiled his nappy not once but twice – I have been haunted by the smell of baby poo!

Everything after the plane trip has been really great though. I had ordered a shuttle transfer from Charles de Gaulle airport to my hotel in the 11ème arrondisement on my own back in Perth and I wasn’t sure what to expect because they couldn’t charge my credit card and told me to pay cash to the driver. This left me kind of … wary of the reliability of the service. However! The guy was there (he was actually the owner) with a sign with my name on it written faintly in a ballpoint pen with a friendly attitude. I expected my ‘shuttle’ to be a blocky van type thing but lo-and-behold Micky (the driver) picked me up in his spanking new shiny black BMW sedan!!!! NAICE!

My hostel was not quite as nice as the Sheraton in Dubai :p The pillows are bizarre – they’re this long flat affair and aren’t very squishy at all… The walls of the hostel were a bit thin but I fell asleep quite easily nonetheless.

I was hungry when I got to the hostel so for eats I went directly across the road from the hostel and got a chicken kebab!! And so I have carried on the tradition of eating late night kebabs on a Saturday night ;) Even in Paris! Hehe.

So I have been trying to speak as much French as possible – as long as the topic of conversation is about inane things I can cope quite well! I am making an effort to start every conversation in French – and only swapping to English if I really do not understand.

I thought arriving in Paris would be more of a shock. I think I was more impressed that my driver drove a BMW! This is not to say that Paris isn’t a completely stunning, ultra-European and beautiful place – it’s more that… I don’t know. I just felt relaxed about being there – as if I went to Paris all the time. It was pretty surreal. Travelling is surreal :D I think maybe it’s because I’ve been imagining this trip for so long that it was easy for me just to slip into the mentality of being in France. Also – speaking French is lots of fun (when I understand and am being understood…)

This morning at my hostel I had a breakfast of what was literally bread with jam and water. I wanted cereal but I didn’t think the milk was soy…

With my frikn 27kg suitcase I decided that I’d better not hoof it to the Gare de Lyon so my hostel ordered a taxi for me – which cost 11euro  - 11euro well spent! I got to the station about 50 minutes early and was stress-free.

So now I’m currently zooming past the French country side which is pretty green with smallish sections of fields with not much growing in them. Interspersed through these fields are little farm houses or lil towns! Very quaint.

At 1:30PM today I will reach Annecy and meet my host family for the very first time! I’m keen :D Then I will go look for food haha.

A bientôt

Jessica

Dubai - An Architect's Paradise

Dubai – An architect’s paradise

This blog will be a summary of the last 48-however many hours have lapsed since I departed Perth.

The flight out of Perth

The flight on Emirates to Dubai was pretty good! They do yummy plane food plus they had an awesome collection of movies and TV shows that you could watch on demand which is pretty good. I began to watch Sucker Punch, something I’ve wanted to watch for ages but I gave up  after 15 minutes or so because it’s stupid. Just… really stupid. Full of skinny girls prancing around basically with no explanation why there is a random wise guy giving this chick weapons to fight… random warriors…???

Anywho! I basically slept a lot on the plane and didn’t study any French :p

Arrival in Dubai

I had no dramas picking up my luggage and meeting my hotel transfer guy, and I promptly sat into the driver’s seat of the car by accident hehe. Unfortunately my suitcase busted on the plane! Luckily it was just a 15cm tear along the rim of my suitcase but still… All I could think of when I looked at it was my dad was right and it did break.

Weather-wise; Dubai was not just stinking hot but more bizarrely muggy – with an oppressive wet kind of heat. Outside my hotel my sunglasses literally fogged up because of the heat and moisture! My hotel is situated next to the beach which would explain why.

So I got to my hotel room at about 6:30 am and snoozed for a couple of hours before heading down to the lobby to eat a $30AUD brekky :S (I was soo hungers). The nice man at the restaurant suggested I go to the Dubai mall to buy a new suitcase and so I did.

The fare from my hotel to the Dubai Mall in a taxi was about $13aud and I managed to find an even BETTER suitcase with four wheels that rotated in any direction for about $130. Not bad – obviously not having to buy another stupid suitcase would be better but that’s a pretty good price for what I thought was a good suitcase. I thought my previous suitcase was good but hey…

Anyway time for some impressions of Dubai. First of all – it’s clean and spacious. I think the best way for me to sum it up is like a very upmarket, trendy and self-aware version of poorer Southeast Asia destinations such as Thailand or Bali.

Similarities: everyone drives fast and as if they own the road (i.e., driving in between two lanes, not indicating etc)

Differences: nothing is shabby! All cars are newish and clean, not falling apart.

Similarities: the shape of the signage is similar to that of Southeast Asian countries and some of the roads had this low-built curbs with the black and white painted on the side

Differences: very spacious roads and pathways!! No overcrowding! (Although I was there on a Friday which is like a Sunday to them)

The title of this blog relates to architecture. Seriously this place is just shooting up and up with gorgeous skyscrapers. It’s pretty amazing! My taxi driver must’ve pointed out like 10 hotels as we drove along – all ‘very nice’ and ‘5 star!’. In a way the cityscape resembles what I expect any large city would look like but… desert style – quintessentially Dubai. I was driving along the main freeway with the taxi driver and it struck me how… exciting the city looked. It’s the middle of summer here at the moment – about 43degrees with low-medium visibility because of the sandstorm. I looked ahead at the city and the tall, sleek skyscrapers were all partly shrouded by a yellow sandstorm and frankly it looked so exciting – mysterious and powerful. I am NOT well-educated in the Star Wars universe – but the cityscape reminds me of one of the Star Wars movies I’d seen where they’d be landing at some desert town with the buildings shrouded in yellow-y dirt. Exciting stuff! Partway through my day it really, truly struck me that I was in a part of Arabia. I had flashbacks to Aladdin as I viewed all the square blocky villas where rich people and the royal family lived. It was awesome.

I guess the only other observation I have is that Dubai is a very cosmopolitan place. I’ve heard heaps of different languages in my day here – but where basic English is a necessity for travel-related communication. There must be sooo much money being invested here – buildings and proposed construction sites everywhere.

At ~4pm yesterday I got picked up for my desert safari tour which was pretty good! We drove out of the Dubai metro area for about 45 minutes to the desert sand dunes and our driver took us on some serious 4wding. Thank GOD I took a Kwells tablet, didn’t eat too much beforehand and sat in the front of the car otherwise I would’ve barfed lol. But seriously it was pretty cool, going over all the ridges and dips in the sand – at some points as the driver went over the ridges it felt like the car was about to tip over!! So I’m not sure how long that drive was – about maybe 15-25 minutes? I was feeling SLIGHTLY sick. It’s weird to describe. I am very prone to motion sickness so the erratic swaying of the 4WD was starting to make me feel a bit bleh and my limbs all tingly BUT he was going not too fast – not faster than 2^nd gear generally so it wasn’t like being on a crazy rollercoaster. It was like a very slow rollercoaster with lots of sand :D

Unless you’re from the Pilbara (in WA’s north) you’re probably not really going to know what I’m talking about but some of the sand dunes and tufts of grass around in the desert with jutting rocky mountains reminded me of my home town Tom Price. Tom Price is a town on a mountain surrounded by shitloads of red-dirt mountains and dry-ness. The shape of the landscape in Dubai reminds me of the shape of the landscape in Tom Price – except somewhat more bleached of colour because of all the sand and lack of spindly dried out trees.

The next part of the tour involved driving out to this random desert camp site thing where there was sheesha (I tried liquorice – didn’t realise it was liquorice – I don’t like liquorice but I liked that I could taste it!), henna (when it was my turn the lady was given food by a lil boy and she had to eat it then and there because of Ramadan so I just didn’t bother going back), there was quadbiking (just going around in circles, kinda lame and you had to pay extra) and sandboarding (not very smooth – the sand didn’t let me glide!). We had our dinner there on these low tables where we sat on cushions in the sand and watched a traditional Arabian (I think) dance by this one man. There were meant to be bellydancers but because of Ramadan they didn’t perform.

So that was essentially my day in Dubai. I enjoyed it – but I don’t think I will bother coming back. There are other places in the world to visit and I’m not exactly in the luxury holiday market.

So now I’m looking forward to Paris. My language skills and general conversation will be subpar… I am wondering how I will cope when I get there! But – however – looking forward to it! My biggest concern at the moment is how I will fare with my 27kg suitcase and my heavy-arse backpack :S:S:S:S:S

A bientôt tout le monde         

Jessica (with a French accent!)

Departing Perth within 24 hours

Allo tout le monde! Welcome to my new stream of consciousness blog.

I am currently ⅔ through packing!!! I am feeling pretty de-stressed :)

Ladies and gents - yours truly has committed to a solid half an hour of studying prior to her departure to France... ....amazing. I know that in my previous posts I have been harping on about how I will study in the week before departure but... um... yeah. Kind of didn't happen! I have come to the conclusion that I am sick of studying French. I still LOVE the language - do NOT get me wrong - I am still waaay pumped for France but I am so sick of studying grammar! Argh! I have reached my conjugational threshold! I just want to start using practical everyday French! I crave Saturday (when I land in Paris) because that will mark the day I begin to learn this beautiful language in context and NOT out of a bloody textbook. Hmpf.

So tomorrow evening I fly out of Perth at 10:30PM on Emirates :) Ten hours to Dubai with an ETA of 5:30AM local time. During this flight I hope to A) commence a novel I bought from an opshop, B) maybe catch a cool in-flight movie, C) get some sleep and D) STUDY FRENCH! Hahah. As much as I'm bored of grammar and its endless lists of rules and exceptions - I do need to brush up! Additionally my vocabulary is preetttty bad so I will be spending quite a bit of time perusing my sweet-as lil' phrase book!

In terms of textbooks that I'm taking over, I've got a compact, minimal approach. All I'm taking is my dictionary (très important tu sais), my Nouvelle Becherelle's art of conjugation (a small notepad sized book no thicker than 1cm that covers how to conjugate all forms of French verbs - the granddaddy of verb-books I'm told by my French teacher) and finally another notepad sized book called "French Grammar for English Students of French" which is simply AMAZING. It goes through all the grammar points that any language student must learn efficiently in English first and then French with effective and clear examples. Parfait!

Moving on now to admin stuff. Oh my god I am beginning to sense how French bureaucracy is somewhat subpar. I mean overall I've had pretty good communication with the staff at Lille. I've not had to contact them directly for anything but they have sent fairly timely e-mails to me about my enrollment and my accommodation. One particular correspondence about my residence at Triolo however has put a bump in my otherwise smooth travel plans. They've sent me an e-mail saying that I had to post a hard copy confirmation of reservation back to them by the 22nd of August. Fine. I printed out the document but ... where do I send it to???? What's the address? I sent two copies out - one to the actual residence and one to the Relations Internationales (RI) Office.

Well, if I'm being truthful - I actually sent 3 out. The first confirmation I posted had the wrong date - I realised I could move in earlier than I had written initially. So I e-mailed the RI office but then I got an automated response saying that the office was closed and staff were on holiday til - get this - the 22nd of August! Wtf! I bet heaps of exchange students are furiously typing away and sending e-mails with genuine questions and no one will be there to answer them... So I am SLIGHTLY worried that they may not have received my confirmation letter. It's scary to think they may give my room away... but alas I did send documents back to both the actual university and the residence itself PLUS I sent e-mails to the office so it should be 'confirmation' enough that I'm bloody coming and you'd better have a room for me!! I will try calling them when I'm in France, just in case there is someone in the office.

Oh I have another minor grumble... I'm not sure whether to swing by the RI office first when I FIRST go to campus on the 31st of August or whether to head straight to Triolo to claim my room... It's just a bit annoying because the residence is a 20 minute walk from campus and it'll piss me off if I have to double back with a suitcase.

Furthermore - the Lille public transport website Transpole (equivalent to Transperth) is useless!!!!!!!! Omg seriously. I spent, I kid you not, TWENTY MINUTES trying to find a public transport route from my hostel in Lille to the university!!!! The locations wouldn't load! When I finally got the stupid program to recognise the departure and arrival points I wanted the program wouldn't actually produce any results! This means I am unprepared!! Tsk tsk not happy! I will just have to wing it when I arrive in Lille and ask questions.

Aside from these little things pissing me off though - things should be okay! I'm going to chill out on the hotel in Dubai on Friday (43 degree day... oh my god pooltime) and do my awsm evening desert tour! I'll arrive in Paris on Saturday night - stay overnight and be on my way to Annecy on Sunday by train :) My host family will meet me at the station. I sent Sylvie an e-mail about me with a couple of photos but I got no reply back - so I will have no idea who to look for when I arrive at Annecy. She did say on the phone though that she would be in Italy on holiday so we'll see!

Basically - I'm super keen to start learning me some real French :) The two week course at IFALPES is a 20-hour per week course that'll be full of grammar... but... oh well! I am just so excited to be in France, speaking French!

Anyway, I shall leave it here for now. Thanks for reading my stream of consciousness-style blog :P

Au revoir!

Je vais aller en France ! I'm going to France!

Hi all


It has been a fair while since my last blog - life just felt insanely busy with exams and overloading and two jobs arrrggh

I guess first news first: I RECEIVED MY ACCEPTANCE LETTER TO LILLE!! This was about a month and a half ago now - but - YES! I'm in!! It's all official!

Also in that time, I received an e-mail from the Student Mobility Office (aka Study Abroad) office stating that I also received the $3000 scholarship!! Whoop whoop! Flights and some accommodation have been booked and visas and insurance have been organised. I have also received confirmation that I will be staying at Residence Triolo in Lille!! Waah so happy :') I'll talk about each each part individually.

Acceptance
About two months ago I received an e-mail to my uni acct stating that I had been accepted to Lille! Included was a PDF of my acceptance letter (Lettre d'invitation) and they stated they'd also send me the original copy 'par courrier postal'. In this e-mail they provided me with a link with:

-the formalities of coming to a French university: http://www.univ-lille3.fr/fr/international/venir-etudier/programme-echange/
-a link to the courses available: http://www.univ-lille3.fr/fr/ (aka there university home page :/ )
-a link to Lille's own social network site: http://lille3-mobilite.ning.com/

I have joined the social network site but I haven't done much with it yet... I will write more about this next time if I use it!

There's not much I can expand on with regards to my $3k scholarship - the lady at the student mobility office said pretty much 99.9999% of people going on exchange will receive one. She just didn't want to guarantee it in case someone didn't qualify. I'd like to take the opportunity here to say I am not exactly uh... an excessively high achiever in my degrees. ... ...... When it suits me I can adapt very quickly to a "C's get degrees" mentality! Obviously I have at least a 65% average b/c I qualified for the exchange program but DON'T STRESS about scholarships if your grades aren't that high - you should still receive the scholarship. (ps I failed STAT1520 (statistics for business) but they overlooked that because most people fail it and it has nothing to do with my Arts degree teehee)

Now I am awaiting news about my OS loan application. $5611 interest-free loan that's simply added to my HECs debt? Yes please!! I need that money. Dear government please give it to me. Thank you!! I recently received an e-mail from UWA stating that they had received a general lump sum of money from the government so I infer they are now deciding how to distribute the cash to us poor students.

My flights. Hmm. A bit expensive. $2300... but ... it's with Emirates so it should be nice and comfy! And reliable. Dad's just like... "yeah I don't want you stranded flying with Air Asia" so yes.. all done and organised. I am stopping over in Dubai for one night in a 5star hotel! wewp! I'll arrive into Dubai in the early morning (I think 7ish am), then I'll head over to the Dubai mall to at least go to the aquarium (so keen) and to visit the Steve Madden shoe store!! This is very important peoples! ... ..... Then desert safari tour on quadbikes! (vrmmmmmmm). I'll hopefully squeeze in some lounging by the pool at the hotel with a cocktail :D then airport the next day and onwards to PA-REEEE !

My plan when I get into Paris is take a shuttle to my hotel (it was about $100 aud but worth it I think b/c it's a private shuttle and I won't get out of the airport until 10pm... late night... strange city... yeah... I don't want to try to find a taxi alone), sleeeep, then the next morning take a regional train to Annecy! Where I should be picked up by my host family at the train station and I can begin my two week intensive language course.

The visa process is not actually THAT hard, here is the link with all the straightfoward info: http://www.ambafrance-au.org/spip.php?article3546

It cost me just under $140. It's really annoying because they don't actually state what is the minimum amount of savings is proof of sufficient financial means. I sent along a bank statement with my visa application stating I had about $5k and my visa got processed fine. All up after sending it (I sent it in a next-day delivery envelope because I bought too many by accident...) I received my passport (with visa document inside) within 2 weeks. It's valid for 8 months from the date I fly into Paris. Weeeo

There is top quality insurance provided for free for the whole duration of my exchange plus 7 days before and after. This is actually amazing. Kudos to UWA for providing this. Seriously that is a wheelbarrow of cash I do not have to spend on a good policy. Those who are reading this and are considering exchange yourself, you can buy extensions of the same policy for a discounted price online! I won't go into details, when you attend your predeparture session you'll get lots of detailed info.

Which leads me to my next topic of rambling - the pre-departure info session! All in all really good, really organised, about 2.5-3 hours long during the study break. You get a folder with some extra documentation you need to fill out, e.g., the exchange code you use to enrol in so you can get cross-credits and other travel stuff. It's a compulsory session that should answer most questions!

And finally, yes, I received an e-mail yesterday stating that I have been successful in my application for Residence Triolo! Apparently this is one of the better residences at Lille 3. This is the website with information about the residences: http://www.crous-lille.fr/ but the actual APPLICATION for residence is very simple. What happens is UWA is first alerted that you are essentially chosen to go to Lille because Lille sends you, via UWA, an application form to fill out that asks name, address, course desired, etc as well as "would you like Lille to reserve a room for you in our residences? Which residence out of these three would you prefer"? That's it. That's how you actually apply for college residence. You fill in the form online, print it out and hand it back to the Study Abroad office and they send it off for you. It was a question that was bugging me for ages... slightly stressing me out. But never fear it all worked out in due time.

On that note I will conclude for now. Sadly it has taken me ageees before I got time to write this blog - but I feel it's quite an important one as a lot of big planning-things have fallen into place. (e.g., I got my visa, booked flights, received confirmation letter, got my scholarship etcetc)

I can breathe a sigh of relief in that most of the large bureaucratic/official matters are taken care of. Now it's down to the little niggly things like buying a case for my sunnies and organising my documents, booking regional trains and hostels and TRYING TO STUDY FRENCH. haha it's terrible, I'm leaving the country in just over a month and I haven't done any hardcore French study. It's like... trying to study for an exam, I just can't stop procrastinating!  I tell myself it's because I just finished uni and I NEED A BREAK! Oh the luxuries of being able to think and do stuff in your native language. Oh well never mind, I'm fairly sure, like during exams, a pang of fear will shoot through me and I will start cramming like CRAZY in the two weeks before I leave! I reason that after even just a few days of intense French study during the semester I begin to think in French so I should be fine. ...should be.

Will update before I leave Perth!
Au revoir!




















 

Just because I can!

For all you folkies who are interested in exchange, here's my statement of objectives that got me through to the next round in my initial application :)

My main academic motivation for studying at Charles de Gaulle University in France is to significantly improve my French language skills. I've always perceived French as a beautiful language but an unattainable one. When I enrolled in Arts & Commerce at UWA and saw that Arts offered beginner-level French - I jumped at the opportunity to learn and was excited and awed that speaking French could become a reality for me. My enjoyment of learning French really surprised me. I found it incredibly satisfying that I was learning a language that I once thought was out of my reach and ability. Whilst the University of Western Australia provides a sound language course for French, by the first semester of second year, it was occuring to me that I wasn't fully utilising the language and optimising my learning. I felt the main deficiency in my education was my oral confidence. My inability to converse with confidence in French was something that deeply bothered me due to two reasons; firstly, I prided myself in studying French, so any gaps in my ability had to be rectified, and secondly, I had elected French as my Arts major and felt compelled to excel in it. I found myself in a dilemma after the commencement of semester one 2010. I wanted to be accomplished in French but I was finding it hard to allocate time and resources during the semester to maximise my performance. Studying French in Perth means studying in an artificial environment. The grammar was taught well but there were limited opportunities at university to practise speaking. I felt time-constraints like studying for other units and working casually were barriers to fully experiencing French. The incompatibility of wanting to excel in French and not having adequate time to study led to an overarching feeling of dejectedness and a disturbing sentiment that I was wasting my time studying university-level French. The general consensus I arrived at through discussing my concerns with other French students and my teachers was that language-learning was maximised by living in a country in which the language is spoken. In a university context Student Exchange was the ideal pathway for an enthusiastic student like me to take. Aligning with my academic motivation to study in France, the main challenge I hope to face and conquer on exchange will be effectively engaging in French conversation. I really hope to improve my skills in general expression and I want to expand my French vocabulary. I want to reach a level of language proficiency where I can live and interact with the French authorities and other French nationals.

Round 1 Admin...

Allo

I feel it's time for an update! I have been incredibly busy - as to be expected - running around doing assignments and trying to get my preliminary exchange preparation stuff in order!! Let's see...

Unit approvals
I was running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what units to put down for my approval. If you're doing an exchange under Arts, the whole process is a little different so my first confusion was do I need to fill in both the attached unit plan worksheet AND e-mail the Arts faculty as well? Turns out I just needed to e-mail the arts faculty first.

Then; I needed to be aware of what Arts units I still needed to do in general, so had to spend some time with the lovely and patient lady at the front desk :) she helped me nut out what units I had done and how many units I still needed to do. Armed with this information, I had a clearer idea of what units to look for in France.

Problem: where to find units? The French are notorious for their bureaucracy and my past experience with French (university) websites is is that they are not as organised and straightforward as UWA's. Anywho... after much (much) searching and exercising my French skills, I found the PDFs that listed units in detail.

I basically have one more French language unit to do (French Advanced II) and then French electives to finish off my French major. My 'French for Foreigners' unit in Lille will be the equivalent to that: all good. I've decided to continue on my English major... I might as well since I can meet the minimum number of units required. I'll paste what I put down as my unit plan :)

Unit plan
French for Foreigners (counting towards my French major, upper level, substitute to core unit French Advanced II, FREN3306)

Translation (Translating French into English) (general elective, upper level unit)

French linguistics (I would like this to be a level one general elective linguistics unit)

European Literature and Culture (an elective counting towards my English major, upper level)


Introduction to Information Sciences and Discourse (a general elective, upper level unit)

I've basically configured all these Lille units to count towards pretty much anything except my French major. My master plan behind this is to try to knock out some of the random general units and random English units I still need to do to finish my degree whilst simultaneously leaving me opportunities to do French units when I come back to UWA. I want to still be able to do French upon my return in 2012 through French electives. This is an attempt to preserve my the language skills I have picked up in France! Maketh senseth? :)

Everything I do must be done to extend the amount of opportunities I have to engage in the French language! Bon! (PS all my units will be in French. It won't matter what I make Lille units count towards to really, because I will still be achieving my main objective: improving language skills.)

Alors... So so after I e-mailed off my study plan to the Arts faculty advisor, I still had to hand in some hardcopy documents I received in my acceptance package for the Arts faculty advisor to sign. Arts then conveniently transported that document over to Business for the Biz Dean to sign as well - even though I wasn't doing my Business component on my exchange. This process was a grey area to me for a while. What if my documents got lost in transportation? How will I know whether Business will then forward the documents straight to the exchange office? Will they let me know if they do? I have a deadline to hand these things in!! Stressss.Turns out Business rang me to come pick up all the signed documents so it was all good :) life skilz babeh. Or at least - UWA admin will look after your stuff.

So okay; next on my agenda: loans.

OS LOAN
An OS loan is an extension of HECS. The government gives me a lump sum of monies and I pay that off with the rest of my HECS debt. So... how to get this loan? I'm lucky I didn't assume the exchange office would put in an application for me automatically, even though I checked the box I would be going for an OS loan in my initial exchange application. I typed in "OS LOAN" into the UWA search box and I immediately found the form I needed to fill in.

After perusing the form, I realised I needed to get it in by May 21st but I wouldn't have a clue if my formal exchange acceptance would arrive from Lille before then (you need the acceptance letter from host university in order to complete loan application process). I worried about it a bit, asked some questions and finally made an appointment with the finance officer in student services. She advised me to lodge the application without the official French acceptance so I was in the system and to simply forward on my Lille acceptance e-mail/letter when I received it. Too easy. Because I'll be doing my exchange as part of a formal exchange program, I didn't have to attach any study plans or anything!! One application form and one debt-declaration/confirmation thing and I was done for that loan. So: hopefully the government will give Jess $5611 for funtimes in France!! :D

As for the Study Abroad scholarship of approx $3k, I just have to wait and see for that. I should get it. Hopefully. The exchange office lady said about 99% of people going on exchange will receive some money from the university one way or another!! So pleaseee! Give me moneh!

So that's a run down of the admin stuff I've done since receiving my UWA acceptance of exchange but before I've received my formal acceptance from Lille. There's still a fair few things I'll have to do. Look into student accommodation is the next thing on my list. *shudder* I am not looking forward to that task. I need to go to the student accommodation website... thing... it's called "CROUS" something something. It's all in French. Funtimes. After that I need to research what the process for obtaining a student visa is - I should do this even before I receive my Lille acceptance. ...I just know I'll be spending a couple of hours there nutting out the bureaucracy of that. Then after that... I should be looking at flights and insurance!!! :D

Anywho, glad I've logged all this down.
Wishing myself luck for the next few months...

A bientôt tout le monde!