These French are crazy!

It's enrolment day here at Sorbonne - for my departments at least. I've got a couple of hours until my next enrolment session (the painful one) so I'm investing my time exploring Sorbonne, asking questions and trying to learn all the things that I think I'll want to know. Right now that means learning how to use a French keyboard.

I've been trying to find out where in the university I can print, knowing there's gotta be somewhere to print things unless every teacher in the university wants hand-written assignments. I found myself in a little computer room on the fifth floor with printer facilities (which I _think_ use my Moneo card. Don't hold me to that, though). I'm now practising my typing on a crazy French keyboard which has more than halved my typing speed. The full stop needs the shift key, the 'a' is where the 'q' should be (and the 'q' is where the 'a' should be) and the bloody 'm' is over by the Enter key so I keep going to type 'my' and it comes out as ',y'!

It appears I can also buy Sorbonne branded clothing (to match my Monash t-shirts) at the student life office, so I think I'll go and knock on their door next. Anything to stop me either being bored or worrying about enrolments and timetables. I've taken to prefacing everything with 'I'm an international exchange student, I have no idea what's going on!'

The next evening...

I'm going to keep this as short as I can since I would really like to go to bed early for once. 

So...now that I have my own qwerty keyboard again (as opposed to the 'azerty' used above) let's see how fast I can type...

It was excitement central here on Rue Rigaud yesterday! When I left for uni there was a cop car parked on the footpath with two coppers staring at a couple of burnt-out cars. Guess someone let the firebug loose last night. As I headed out again yesterday evening there was a massive tow-truck hauling away an equally massive regular truck which I guess had broken down on our street. And all in one day!

Yesterday's enrolment wasn't too painful. If you discount the fact that I was there for five hours (not all of which time was spent on enrolments) then the actual process wasn't too bad. The worst part was that the whole thing was a pen-and-paper version of the Monash enrolment process - and I'm told that, like at Monash, the French students at Sorbonne get to enrol online too! But for the exchange kids, oh no, pen and paper is good enough.  Lucky I'm good at Tetris when it came to creating my timetable! 

Anyway, I now have a mostly problem-free timetable for semester one (three hours on Wed arvo, three hours on Thurs arvo and two hours on Fri morning - definitely a lot of backpacking in my future!) and a semi-problematic timetable for second semester which, thankfully, I have a whole semester to try and fix.

I headed home just before 4, grabbing a light lunch on the way - yes, it was that kind of day. A trip to the boulangerie (which has become like a daily routine, in true French fashion) for a baguette and I went home for an hour, eating some dinner and catching up on emails and the like. Then I repacked my bag and headed out again - I had plans

When most 19-year-olds say they have plans on a Friday night, you'd probably assume a party, or drinks with friends. Both were on the agenda for my friends yesterday, and I was hoping to drop in on their pre-drinks at Lisanne's house if I had time. No, this particular 19-year-old had plans to spend her Friday evening at - Le Louvre.

The Louvre is free on Wednesday evenings to EU nationals under 26, and on Fridays evenings to anyone under 26, these being the nights the museum is open until 9.45pm. Of course, as I confirmed yesterday, the museum is free all year round to people under 26 who live in the EU economic area, regardless of nationality. A flash of my passport and I have access to one of the biggest, coolest museums in the world at any time. I'm down with that.

I invaded the Ancient Egyptian section with incredible single-mindedness and speed, since my prior trips to the museum barely afforded me enough time to glance at the things I really wanted to see. Two hours and I had seen all the architecture, mummies, tombs, jewellery, samples of writing, animals, amulets, statues and so much more on the ground floor of the Louvre. My feet/foot/foot-and-stump were/was beginning to hurt by now, so I was thinking of heading back to the Caroussel for a hot chocolate, a little souvenir shopping and a trip home (now being a little too tired for a trip to the 5th to see Lisanne and the others). I glanced at the map to check the way out and my jaw nearly hit the floor.

I'd been looking at the Egyptian section on the ground floor.

The other half of the collection was on the first floor.

Two hours and I'd only seen half of one collection!

Covering the whole Louvre is going to take me quite a while longer. Needless to say, I think I see a Friday night tradition developing here. That is, when I'm not on a plane or train to Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Holland, or...pretty much anywhere in Europe, really.

Since the tunnel between Metro station Palais Royal-Musee du Louvre and the Louvre Caroussel closes at 8.30pm, so I headed out the exit up to rue Rivoli. Unable to find the street level entrance to Palais Royal-Musee du Louvre Metro, I went for a casual stroll alongside the river Seine (as you do, on crutches, on a Friday night) until I reached Pont Neuf Metro station in Saint-Germain-des-Pres and headed home for the night.

Today? Well, I went clothes shopping, since I need some winter warmies for Paris, and wrote a lot. A lot. And it is now DEFINITELY bedtime. Fingers crossed for a post from Lille tomorrow night!

Yes, it's the pyramids

The Old Royal Palace from inside the Louvre pyramid

Sphinx, anyone?

Casually sketching Egyptian statues at the Louvre on a Friday night...

Steles covered in hieroglyphs

Osiris, Horus and some pharoah

Cool, huh?

A super-creepy rendering of Osiris (who was actually a pretty nice guy)

Totally want these shabtis for my afterlife!

Does this mummy look ready to wake up at any moment to anyone else?

Hey, Mum - does this look like the one I made in high school?

Bes, the dwarf god, god of mothers and childbirth.  No, I'm serious

A wall full of steles

(L-R:) An ibis sarcophagus and an ibis mummy

Inside the Louvre after dark

The Louvre/Palais Royal at night

Smurf lollies!

My new white fedora, the aptly-named Blanche

Mum, show this to Dad and Kiri - I couldn't resist!

Anecdotes

So I found out yesterday why Sorbonne Uni doesn't have a big fancy sign at the entrance.  It does.   The university building takes up the whole block, but most of the south side is currently undergoing renovations, and the main entrance to the uni is conveniently obscured by all the scaffolding in the courtyard out the front.  It's actually quite a nice entrance, too - big letters saying 'SORBONNE UNIVERSITY', the EU and French flags and some pretty-coloured wall panels.  I feel a little bit diddled now.  Fingers crossed they finish building before I leave so I can get a photo for posterity's sake!

First trip to the Le Bourget post office yesterday - and I escaped alive!  Strange, though - their post office is also its own bank!  It wasn't too far to walk, either - I keep forgetting that Australia is BIG, and Paris is small, and therefore maps lie to me when they tell me how far things are.  I re-learned this fact today (as I'm sure I will many, many times) when I headed for the post office in the 5th arrondissement, also nice and close.  It's all so little!

My other handy discovery of yesterday - turns out my bank, which is a nice, two-minute walk from uni via the shortcut I've discovered, also has branches and ATMS in Le Bourget (between the pharmacy and the post office, I forget exactly where, but it's a short walk, naturally) and at Place du 8 mai 1945 in La Courneuve, where I change from the metro to the bus.

Speaking of buses, they're crazy around here!  Even the bus drivers themselves fail to see the logic of a 20-minute wait at the terminus for three buses to then leave at once.  My poor, unmathsy brain is also bamboozled by the way the trip to the metro in the morning (during peak hour, please note) takes the five to 10 minutes that it should to cover the relevant distance, yet said trip in the other direction at 3pm takes at least 20 minutes (from when I started counting...).  It's actually faster at 5pm, I've found!  They also build buses differently here - most of the centre of the bus is given over to standing room, which makes sense since every bus I've been on while here has been so full it was standing room only...

Our teacher mentioned something about the metro last week that I've noticed applies elsewhere as well.  All rubbish bins in the Paris metro, and in many public areas around Paris (even footpaths in Le Bourget) are clear plastic bags hanging from a metal ring.  Why?  So that you can't hide a bomb in the rubbish.  I kid you not.  Paris rubbish bins are designed not to be conducive to terrosist attacks.  It's a little sad that we live in a world where you have to think this way.

I've also discovered that, according to the popular opinion of my friends and Erasmus peers, group E is thought to be the top class is our French stage intensif.  Apparently, A is the bottom and E is the top.  Needless to say, I'm more than a little confused and concerned by this concept...though I'm equally concerned by the other way round!

Mind you, they told me this after I complained how bored I was because my class was really easy (today we conjugated the two most common verbs in the four most common tenses!  Yay!).  Hmmm......France makes NO sense at all.

At the CROUS canteen - Rafael, Lisanne, Martin

My chocolate mousse (and Luis Felipe's arm)

...then the world would be a much more sober place (pun intended)

The bus stop in La Courneuve

Sorbonne's library, which has a HUGE collection of Spanish and French literature...

Wandering east through Le Bourget

A new take on 'Beware of the Dog' ('mechant' means 'wicked')...

The clear plastic bag bins - see story above.

The west end of Rue Rigaud, looking east

The clinic next door from the west side

The bottom of Rue Santeuil (where Sorbonne is)

Guess where...no, you'll never guess...

Paris, city to love

One of my professed aims in choosing to move to Paris was to see if I could learn to love the city the way the rest of the world does.  Paris never caught my eye the way other cities did, and given its reputation I wanted to see if it could given enough time.  After a day like yesterday I think it's safe to say that after five years I am finally learning to truly appreciate and enjoy Paris.

With my head-cold relegated from hindrance to nuisance, I decided to head into Paris on this cloudy Sunday and sip hot chocolate on the Seine - a cliche, I know, but considering I moved to Paris three weeks ago I've seen surprisingly little of Paris, and I haven't had a single chocolat chaud yet - not one that wasn't entirely machine-made, anyway.

I decided on Pont Neuf as the best bet, being one of the two metro stations on line 7 located beside the Seine and located in the oldest, therefore most developed and touristy area.  I figured I should easily be able to find a cafe where I could sit and sip hot chocolate for an hour while I watched the activity on the Seine before heading quietly home to nurse my cold.

I should have known that nothing involving me ever goes that smoothly.

Pont Neuf is a real misnomer - the so-called 'New Bridge' is actually the oldest of the bridges in Paris that crosses the Seine.  Along with the Pont Marie, the other Seine metro stop on line 7, Pont Neuf actually crosses to the Ile-de-la-Cite, the island in the middle of the Seine on which Notre-Dame-de-Paris is located, before reaching the south side of the Seine.  The location and the excitement were too much for me, and, naturally, I began wandering.

I finally settled on a little cafe bistro on the south side of the Seine, with amazing views of the Pont Neuf on my left, Notre Dame to my right and the tall, imposing buildings of the Ile-de-la-Cite directly before me.  Having consumed what was definitely an inferior cup of Paris hot chocolate, I thanked the funny adorable waiter and explored the south side of the Seine for a while, walking alongside the river and looking at the various riverside merchants - you know, the ones you see in all the stereotypical Paris pictures.  I wandered back across the Pont Neuf and took a short walk on the Ile-de-la-Cite, before finally settling on a cheese crepe at a little tourist shop on the north side of the Seine for lunch.

I wanted to learn to love Paris, if I could, but I didn't want to fall into the soppish (soppy + foppish) adoration of most tourists simply because it's 'Paris' without any justifiable reasons for my infatuation.  Luckily Paris is willingly to provide ample reasons if you're willing to look for them.

Paris is an elegant city, with more history than you can shake a stick at and plenty of class to go with it.  Unlike most cities, though, Paris wears her age wonderfully well, resembling a dignified lady who grows old gracefully, her many years beautifying her rather than burdening her.  London, too, has the sense of being improved by her years rather than ruined, but London, like the British, is much more stiff and reserved, with a very regal air that reminds you she is London, jewel of the crown that is the British Isles.  Paris wears her beauty with a much more casual grace, allowing you to fall at her feet and admire her rather than commanding our sincere but restrained worship, as does London.

But Paris also has an air of 'more than meets the eye'.  For a city so much worshipped by strangers who simply run around to the Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeur and the Arc de Triomphe and claim to be in 'love' with the place, Paris seems to have a soft spot for those more sincere admirers who are willing to look for the undiscovered places and walk the untrod paths to find the real history, the real stories, the real atmosphere behind the much-worn stereotype and appreciate the real city.  In other words, I think Paris likes my skepticism.

Looking west from Pont Neuf towards the Eiffel Tower

Napoleon's tomb, Les Invalides (left) and Eiffel Tower (right)

Boats along the river (inoperative, sadly)

Looking east towards Pont Neuf from the cafe

Looking west at Notre-Dame-de-Paris

Ile-de-la-Cite and my chocolat chaud

Street vendors along the Seine - guess who has a new painting?

Pont Neuf from water level

Mum, explain what 'sapeurs-pompiers' means to Dad, please...

The 'Palace of Justice' on Ile-de-la-Cite

Looking north from Ile-de-la-Cite...

...and looking south

East along the Seine - it beats the Yarra hollow

Life's little dramas

As usual, I'm blaming the boys for all my misfortunes, justly or not.  This time I'm blaming Martin for the mild (but nasty) cold I seem to have caught - after all, he was complaining of a sore throat yesterday morning.  Needless to say, the kettle's getting an extra workout, and my productive day of getting stuff done has turned into a lazy feeling-sorry-for-Firefly day.

Yesterday was pretty much a normal day.  I saw Martin before class and we made plans to have lunch after class.  Of course, it occurred to me during break, after I managed to carry a hot chocolate from the ground-floor canteen to our third-floor canteen all by myself, that I'd forgotten to put any more money in my wallet that morning, and I wasn't sure how much I had left.  Lucky for me, I had my metro fare home and enough over for lunch.

I got out of class, though, to find a message from Martin saying he'd left some stuff at home and had to go back for it, but would be at uni again later.  Having no idea whether Paul and Lisanne's class had finished or not, I went for lunch with a bunch of other girls from my class that I hadn't really spoken to before - three Germans, two Czechs, an Austrian, and my Ecuador-born Italian friend.  For the first time the common language really WAS French (except for the bit of English that Julia and I used since German and English are so compatible).

Returning to uni, I finally managed to speak to someone in the Spanish department about language levels and then headed for the library, where I borrowed my first book - Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days - in French, of course.  Martin was still nowhere to be found and I was getting frustrated when he messaged me to say that he wasn't coming in as he had to go to the hospital.  Naturally, given my recent experiences, this caused a mild panic attack on my part.  Turns out the genius walked into a door at home and wound up resembling the fruit bat from Mum's favourite joke that flew into a tree, and the pharmacist had recommended getting stitches.

Having been reassured that the poor child didn't need me to come and get him since he'd already been discharged from hospital, I dropped in to visit Brigitte at my residence on my way out to the shops.  She quickly furnished me with an attestation de logement to give to my bank so I can get my bank card, and while we were at it we sorted out the direct debiting for my monthly rent, which I'm sure made her happy.  I also gave her the large pile of mail I had for my apartment's previous tenants, which greatly outweighed the mail for me...nothing like feeling loved.

Having woken up this morning with Martin's little cold, there was very little motivation to do anything but sit around in my pajamas and mope til 2pm, which I did, and did very well.  It was sunny outside, so I decided to go for a walk to get some sunshine - and some Vitamin C tablets if I could find them.  The pharmacy was closed on Saturdays, unsurprisingly, and there was no sign of vitamins in either of Le Bourget's two supermarkets - yes, I said two.  I found another one on my walk.  It's bigger than the Franprix supermarket that I've been going to and it sort of resembles Aldi on the inside - except for the bread section, naturally, which resembles a neat, well-stocked little bakery of its own.

I was trying to find the local pool, which is supposedly at the end of my street, but having found my way to the local sports complex which was five minutes in a different direction without seeing any sign of a pool, I decided it was time to head home to mope again.  That was when I saw the sign - literally.  "Publique piscine".  I continued heading home, but I had a pretty good squiz from the other side of the road so I knew where to look on my next walk.  It was only a 200 metre walk home, and once I've crossed Rue Jean Jaures I'd estimate another 50 metres to the pool - really not a problem for a person with two feet (which I will have by the time I'm allowed to swim again).

The cripple thing goes down a lot better here than it would in Australia.  Everyone offers me a seat on the bus or metro, even when I'm not looking for one.  I even got ma'amed the other day by an adorable 10-year-old boy offering me a seat.  "Excusez-moi, madame, voulez-vous s'assessoir?"  "Excuse me, ma'am, would you like to sit down?"  I almost laughed.  I have to remember that to someone of his age I'm an older person, and they therefore have to be unfailingly polite, using 'madame' and 'vous' (the polite form of 'you').  The worst part is I don't know how to address him back!  Monsieur - perhaps?

The crutches do have downsides, though.  It rained yesterday afternoon, and apart from the obvious difficulties of using crutches on wet, slippery streets (even worse when you enter buildings with polished floors - 'slipped on a banana peel' comes to mind), a girl who's using two hands on her crutches can't hold an umbrella!  When I'm heading home alone I just have to put up with it and get wet.  It's still summer, though (just), and the mosquitoes here think I'm just as much of a rare delicacy as did the ones at home.  Damn thing got me on the metro yesterday morning twice before I noticed he was there.  I had a nice red spot on my face (and hand) to try and explain when I arrived at uni.  Course, they match the fading mozzie bites from my first few nights here, when it was as hot as the Outback at Christmas and I had the windows open of an evening...

In a minute I'll grab a needle and thread and finishing patching my jeans and watching Bones before bed.  Every night before I go to sleep I look out the window at the Eiffel Tower all lit up.  I'm not sure why, since it's not even a monument that I really like, but it looks kind of magical at nighttime.  She seems like some kind of golden guardian angel, watching over the city of Paris in its sleep.  It's reassuring to see her standing there every evening like an old friend, especially on the days when I miss Australia just a tiny little bit - like today.

Schooldays

Life in Paris is slowly turning into a humdrum of morning classes at Sorbonne, time with friends, navigating bureaucracy, domestic chores, homework and Peloton Cafe posting.  Every morning I'm up at 7am, out of the apartment by 7:45 and on the metro to uni by 8.  If I'm lucky then I get to see Martin and Paul before class begins at 9.

Yesterday I had the delight of discovering that the girl who sits in front of me is the delightful Fia, of Tom and Fia's Parisian Adventure.  The lovely Silician-Briton has an accent that I would literally die for and was the only person in my class who was as shocked as me  when our teacher came out with the F-word, in English, during class (admittedly she was trying to explain a few cultural things to us, culminating in why you shouldn't mispronounce the word for 'kiss' in French as it comes out like...yeah, you get the idea).  The other Aussie girl in my class, a fellow Monashian called Rebecca, was absent and missed all the fun.

I met up with the boys and Lisanne after class and Lisanne invited me to come along to lunch with the whole group, most of whom I didn't know.  I followed them to a place a block from Sorbonne where I'd never been.  Turns out they'd led me to the CROUS canteen/restaurant - CNOUS & CROUS are sort of like the government student welfare organisations (National and Regional) and they run a canteen thingy in the 5th arrondissement, amongst other things, with cheap healthy food for poor university students.  A 6-point meal (a 4-point main and a 2-point dessert, for example) costs 3.10 euro - about four bucks.  For a plate of green beans and potatoes au gratin and a thing of chocolate mousse with fresh fruit, that's not too bad.

I had a moment yesterday - one of those blissful moments when you look around yourself and think you've found heaven.  Sitting at the end of a table in a crowded canteen in Paris, eating chocolate mousse out of a little glass while listening to your friends speaking Portuguese on your left and German on your right was mine.  I could have sat and listened to the two languages and eaten chocolate mousse all day (OK, well not all day, it wasn't the best mousse I've ever had and I'd have felt sick after a while).  All finally replete, we emptied out trays (for the record, Lisanne was carrying mine) and headed off.  Martin had to go back to uni, and Paul was looking for a phone shop, so I walked back to the metro with Luis Felipe, one of the Portuguese-speaking Brasilians in Martin's class (and btw, I'm aware I spell Brasil the Spanish way.  Can't help it.  Plus, it looks prettier).

I dropped into the boulangerie on the way home to get a demi-baguette for dinner and a tarte aux fraises for afternoon tea - it's a strawberry tart.  Despite everything I've said about the lack of fruit and veg, fresh strawberries and raspberries are as common as ants at a picnic, and much nicer (than the ants, I mean).  As usual my evening was filled with Peloton Cafe work, my homework for class (so not worth it) reading and packing my bag for today's excursion to the bank with the international students group to open an account.

This morning was also going pretty well, until the part where I discovered that said bank excursion is actually next Wednesday.  This left me in a pretty predicament.  The bank excursion was next Wednesday, and I had an appointment for next Thursday at a different bank, but seeing as I need to be paying money by the first of October, leaving it til the 26th or 27th of September to open a bank account didn't exactly strike me as wise.

I toddled (hobbled) off to uni as usual, devoting the first hour or so of class (while everyone was discussing the tensions surrounding Islam in France at the moment thanks to some tasteless cartoons) planning out a novel in my notebook, and then the next hour doing actual work.  By breaktime I was pretty hungry and a little annoyed I didn't have any food in my bag, so I headed downstairs to the cafe on the ground floor, where I found Lisanne and Paul talking with some friends.  I grabbed a chausson aux pommes to munch on and walked back up to class with them.  Martin wasn't there as he was 'tired and sick' (which tends to happen when you get home at 2am...I had no sympathy for him or Paul).

We spent the final hour of class discussing cultural cliches and stereotypes and their origins, the teacher illustrating their inaccuracy with some cliches from our own countries, including a reference to Australians having kangaroos outside their front doors.  Unfortunately for her, as I said to Rebecca, in my case that's actually true...though it's usually the side door.  Still, when you've named the local kangaroos and can tell them apart on sight...

After class I completely lost Paul and Lisanne, since I had no idea if their class had finished or not, and found myself in the company of the Australian guy from Sunday's picnic, Jono, and some of his English and Australian friends.  Together we headed for the CROUS restaurant again, where I managed to bond with Perthian Joanna over the similarity of our surnames.  I spose when you're 10 000 miles and more away from home you'll grasp for anything that gives you comfort.

After lunch I headed for the bank where Paul had opened an account a few days earlier to see if I could do the same.  As it was they had a vacancy right then, I walked it and had a bank account 15 minutes later, a little shell-shocked at how easy it was.  Unfortunately I've been having a look at the CAF and EDF tonight and it seemeth me that using the bank account won't be as easy as opening it...and given it's taken me a fortnight and much lost sleep to open it, that's saying something...

Sorbonne stories, sojourns and schoolfellows

(Sunday) It was, quite literally, a beautiful day today.  It really is still the end of summer here, and we couldn't have chosen a better day for our "brunch" (picnic) with the Erasmus/international kids.  Parc Monceau is on metro line 2, not far from Montmartre, but I was still a couple of stations from Monceau when I met the gaze of a girl on the train and we both did a double-take - Louise, one of the French students organising the event.  We hobbled up the metro steps together to find ourselves right next to the Erasmus group which was congregating outside the park.  My friend Martin had just arrived, and it had been a WHOLE 40 HOURS or something since we'd last seen each other, so we had a lot of catching up to do (actually, we did).  Anas decided to be annoying and didn't bother showing - ah well, his loss, we had fun.

We essentially staked out a nice piece of grass (yes, grass, it exists in France!) and sat there for four or so hours, eating large amounts of French cuisine, most of it in supermarket packaging, and lazing around in the warm, bright sun.  Like a good Australian I had sunscreen in my bag, which I applied (because nothing could be more embarassing than being the Australian in Paris with a September sunburn) but for once I wasn't the only Australian!  There was another guy there who caused quite a stir when he mentioned his country of origin, as everyone knew where I was from (and had probably heard my laments about being the only non-European there that day) and immediately turned to me to tell me I was no longer alone!  After a brief conversation establishing nothing more than our cities of origin, though, he left to sit with his friends and disappeared sometime after.  Fine with me, really - I came to France to make friends with Europeans (well, Frenchies), not more Aussies!

Despite today being the second of the Journees du Patrimoine, and one or two people having expressed interest in the nearby monuments that I'd mentioned, the heat of the summer sun made us all lazy, and instead Martin and I sat and talked for ages with some German girls who were there (So.  Many.  Bloody.  Germans!  And some Italians this time, too) and messed around with my juggling balls and Aussie flag (we're converting Martin to an Australian - I have photos with the flag.  Next time he has to bring his German one for me!)  We eventually headed home around five, you know, before I fell asleep right there on the lawn, which I did debate doing.  But I had an hour-long trip home and with the bus strike still on I figured the earlier, the better.  That, and some catching up to do with posting for Peloton Cafe (since Jarrod's on holidays and I'm actually in the right time zone to post the European stuff from the World Championships promptly).

(Tuesday) I've just got back from my first trip to the laverie - the building laundromat.  The new washing machines are now installed and working, but not so the dryers...suffice to say, my bathroom - nay, my APARTMENT - now looks like a Chinese laundry.  I've got the windows wide open in the hopes that everything might dry before morning, even though it's a little chilly in here now.

Yesterday was my final day of freedom before I started my stage intensif - my two-week French crash course at Sorbonne.  I therefore headed down to the Carrefour to frivolously spend my euros on totally needless items.  I now have a full set of crockery and cutlery - knives, forks, spoons, teaspoons, bowls, plates and mugs for four - in my still purple-and-green kitchen, and a clock radio with iPod connectivity for my bedhead.  It's beginning to look less like a transient hotel around here and more like my actual place of residence for the next year of my life.

I then hopped on the metro and headed down to Sorbonne to meet Martin for lunch - hey, not a lot else to do, so why not see my friends?  Martin, however, had gotten himself screwed by Sorbonne again.  Just like his and Anas's enrolment in European studies last week, Martin had rocked up yesterday for his English-speaking world enrolment only to be told it was today, even though our list of enrolment dates clearly says...yeah, whatever.  I'm learning that you pretty much ignore anything you're 'officially' told around here, and before you say it, Dad, I doubt getting things in writing would help.  Knowing this place, they'd probably look at it and swear black and blue that they can't help, they don't speak French!

Martin having gone home, I had a leisurely late lunch by myself and paid a visit to a couple of offices at Sorbonne - both closed, of course - before returning to the metro and heading back home.  I'd picked up some green beans at the Carrefour earlier and wanted to go to the supermarket for some ingredients to cook an actual meal.  Fresh veg seems to be a rarity in France - they seem to favour bulk-buy frozen, and what there is in the Fruit & Veg section in limited and not great quality.  I never thought I'd say this, but...I miss Coles.

With another full backpack of stuff only I could accumulate, I headed home to put my newly-purchased chopping board to work (oh!  Right.  Forgot to mention that.  I have a chopping board!).  Despite my body's gastronomic apathy, the plan was pasta with veggies in white sauce and that's exactly what I did.  I'll be making risottos in no time, I'm sure.  I packed my bag for tomorrow (today, Tuesday, whatever), set the alarm on my nice new alarm clock and finished reading 'Anne of the Island' in bed.

Today started off pretty well - though my alarm clock failed to go off (apparently it was set for 8am, not 7), both my body and my phone alarms certainly did.  Up, shower, dressed, breakfast and out the door by quarter to eight.  It wasn't until I was standing in the metro station purchasing my ticket that my worst nightmare, the thing I panic about every day came true.  There are many things which, if I'd forgotten them, I could have dismissed with a shrug, but forgetting your wallet can prove a little more troublesome, especially when it leaves you without enough money for a metro ticket.

A frantic dash home on my already sore and sweaty hands nearly caused me a panic attack.  If my wallet wasn't in my bag and it wasn't on my desk then someone MUST have stolen it!  A rare moment of clarity saved my sanity, and I meekly fished it out of my dirty clothes bag, where I left it last night after an abortive attempt at clothes-washing.  I put enough money for my metro ticket in easy reach and then raced (I'm not kidding.  It was a Paralympian effort) back to the metro station.  But the damage was already done.  I was definitely going to be late.

Arriving at Sorbonne just past 10 minutes late, it struck me as ironic that the one day I'm late is the one day Sorbonne is actually on time.   My friends were nowhere to be seen, and things were about to get worse.  No-one knew where my class was!  Everyone I asked assumed I was part of DELF/DULF (please don't ask me, I still don't know) and tried sending me to the DULF testing in the main amphitheatres.  As I got more panicked and distressed my teary eyes and choked-up voice elicited some sympathy from the people I asked, and half an hour later, now 45 minutes late, I found myself on the third floor staring at the class lists for the stage intensif.  Despite what Martin had told me I wasn't in the same class as Paul, but I set off anyway for room 302.

It was empty.

The teacher cornered me as I turned to go back up the corridor.  "You're very late," she chastised.

"I got...I was been....lost, I...I'm really sorry, can I come in now?"

Thankfully she let me into a classroom on the OTHER side of the corridor, gave me a seat and the class notes and went back to giving everyone the listening test answers.  I think I redeemed myself in her eyes a little five minutes later when I was able to tell her that department 93 was Seine-Saint-Denis while she was writing down all the Ile-de-France departments for us.  I failed to mention the fact that I live there, though.

I'm aware that I was a) largely asleep, and b) not trying very hard when I did that French ability test last Thursday, but I still didn't think that I did too badly on it.  I was still of that opinion when I sat down in class this morning.  One would assume that 'E' would be either the top or bottom group, and since I know I'm not good enough to be in the top group that meant E was the bottom.  This belies, however, the fact that my friend Paul in group D doesn't have very good French and was terrified by the work my class did this morning which I found pretty basic.  Coupled with the fact that my out-loud reading had only one pronunciation error (and I think I can be forgiven for not knowing that in French you pronounce the 'p' in 'psychiatrique') and I only had two errors in dictation, I am definitely beginning to think I'm in the wrong class (tomorrow we're doing Coco Chanel and 'fashion' - yay! :P).  This is, of course, assuming there is any logic whatsoever to the way the classes have been put together, which I'm beginning to think there isn't.  If I sneak a French language copy of 'Around the World in 80 Days' from the library into class and read it under the desk, do you think the teacher will notice?

After class Lisanne and Martin were boring and bailed (Lisanne had...something to do, and Martin was expecting the Internet connection guy that afternoon), so Paul and I had lunch and then headed for the library.  We have a library on campus and I had no idea!  He surfed the Internet looking for answers to his home Internetconnection problems while I hobbled between the aisles, almost overcome with emotion at the sight of a library dedicated almost wholly to foreign-language literature (Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda, here I come!) and French linguistics (grammar of mediaeval French?  Yes please!).  Paul has now learned why no-one takes me into libraries anymore...or bookshops...there's one across the street.

He had an appointment at the bank at three, so we made our way south from Sorbonne to find the bank.  Having nothing better to do, and given Paul's French isn't so crash-hot, I came along for company and translation.  When the bank guy realised I was explaining the details to Paul in English after he said them in French, though, he volunteered to switch to English since it was Paul's stronger language.  One painless half-hour later and Paul is one attestation d'hebergement (proof of housing) away from having a bank account.  Needless to say I'm also getting my rear into gear on that account (pun intended :D).

We'd seen a beautiful church just a few blocks from Sorbonne on our way to the bank, and Paul was happy enough to detour a little on our way back to the metro.  Needless to say, it was gorgeous.  Eglise Saint-Medard (Wikipedia it, it exists) is not too big and beautifully built.  I think I just found my new hiding place.

I'll add a few photos before I go to bed - it's getting late and Anne of Windy Poplars really is good reading.  Just pray that I don't have any homework for tomorrow's class - actually, if there is, I can probably do it while the teacher calls the roll, unless...anyone know the average monthly wage in Australia?  (If you're wondering, it's 1300euro/m in France, 1000/m in Italy and 300/m in Croatia...and I'm doing this class why?)

The Metro at Stalingrad - line two is partly above-ground

Parc Monceau in Montmartre (and Belgian Rob making faces)

Me exploiting Martin's camera-shyness

Our newest convert!  Now for the Vegemite...

French pique-nique/brunch/food

Sorbonne girls!  Of course, she's German :P

Though she's not - Italians have funny rolling accents in French!

More sunsets from my window

The cafe near Sorbonne that Martin, Anas and I frequent

Censier-Daubenton Metro station

First 'cooked' dinner at my place!

My purple and green theme - like it?

So many Victor Hugos, so little time...

Pont-Neuf metro is also called 'Le Monnaie'

Tonight's sunset - this makes up for not seeing every sunrise