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!
No comments:
Post a Comment