La Sorbonne

So today was my orientation day at Sorbonne Uni. I was up much earlier than I wanted to be (6am) to make sure I was there on time at 8.30. I left the residence at 7am and was on the metro by 7.30. It's a 35-minute trip from La Courneuve - 8 mai 1945 to Sorbonne's nearest metro station, Censier-Daubenton - I timed it. When you know where you're going, Sorbonne's Censier Centre is a five-minute walk from the metro, even on crutches. I walked into the foyer 20 minutes early and took up residence near the entrance to Amphitheatre B, near a bunch of chattering students who I assumed also weren't from France.

As it approached 8.30 and the foyer began filling with people, I found myself in a conversation with a group of other exchange students, mostly from Europe (though I did have a southern hemisphere compatriot from Brazil). What was the language of conversation, you might ask? English! I got a few laughs when I pointed out to everyone that despite the fact that we had come all the (for some a very long) way to France to learn French, we were talking in English even though it was only the native language of about two of us.

At about a quarter to nine everyone began filing into the amphitheatre, and I found myself in the company of three lovely young fellows - a French Swiss named Anas, an Austrian named Paul and a German called Martin (trust me to fall in with just about the cutest guy in the room - just don't tell Silvio he's been replaced in my Deutsch affections!) We sat through the standard welcomes from the President of the university (I'm impressed - I doubt even Ed Byrne welcomes the Monash exchange students, let alone Alan Finkel) and various people from the Service des Relations Interational for us foreign kids (by the way, they have two classifications for exchange students in France - when they say 'international', that means 'anyone not cool enough to be part of Europe'. Anas kept nudging me whenever they mentioned it since I was the only one it applied to). There was also the usual information about how and when to enrol (I repeat the joke about the French inventing the word bureaucracy) and then they let us out for a quick snack break. Only in France would a university orientation provide chaussons aux pomme (little apple puffs) as a snack.

The second half of the session began with some information about the CAF - it's French housing assistance, available to anyone living in France. They could probably have done the whole presentation in 5 minutes from what I heard, since I was falling asleep for most of it. Martin laughed and agreed when I said my head was hurting from the extraneous French with which we were being bombarded. It presented us with another problem though - EVERYTHING in France requires a bank account: CAF, your electricity bill (which is worth nearly as much as a passport in France), phone sims, even some transport ticket machines only accept bank cards, you name it. The problem is that opening a bank account is damn near impossible - and some banks ask for an EDF (electricity bill) to open the account...talk about a catch-22. I'm going to bank number #2 tomorrow, and Anas has an appointment with HSBC. Chances are whoever opens an account first will tell the others and we'll all get accounts with whichever bank is kindest to exchange students doing their very best to navigate the ridiculous bureaucracy!

At the end of the session they had us collect the documentation we’d need for enrolment, and then Martin, Anas and I headed across the road to a café with free WiFi for lunch. Anas lives in Montmartre, not far from me, Martin lives in Montparnasse, just south of Sorbonne (though he keeps saying Montmartre by accident, and we keep giving him grief for it) and Paul currently lives in a youth hostel, so none of them have Internet at home. In fact, I’m probably the most well-established of us all so far, which is a really sad statement on our lives. If you ever want to go on exchange, make sure you go to a country with a minimum of bureaucracy – seriously.

Just before 1:30 Martin and I headed upstairs for the 2.00pm French language test that was on offer. I have no idea if it will be useful, especially since I’m not intending to enrol in any of the specialised exchange-student-French courses on offer, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. After a 45-minute wait (in which we couldn’t find Paul) they finally posted the room lists and let us go in. It wasn’t too bad, test-wise, since I’ve always hated listening comprehension work (it’s so not realistic), but my grammar has always been excellent and my reading comprehension is pretty good, even if the questions got harder as we went along.

I did find Paul in the end – as the assessor called our names in pairs to hand in our tests I discovered that surname-wise Paul was the guy after me! We had no idea if Martin had finished yet (given he’s a native Swiss-French speaker, Anas opted out of the French ability test – fair enough), so we headed downstairs (turns out there IS an elevator, which I may just end up using) and went home, discussing plans for tomorrow (the party’s at Anas’s place – he’s got his own actual apartment). I headed off through the drizzle towards the metro for the trip home. I did detour via the Carrefour again (I say detour, but really it’s another excursion all of its own) and got my coat-hangers and cactuses, among other kitchen items (I’ve stuck with the purple and green theme, by the way - and Grandma, I don’t hold with the ‘purple and green should never be seen' – I quite like it!).

I ended up going down to the pizza shop for dinner again, since I’m out of spaghetti ingredients temporarily and my kitchen doesn’t run to much just yet (I’m seriously beginning to crave vegetables though!). The pizza guy down there must like me, because he threw in a drink for me, and he even remembered which one was my favourite! It is _definitely_ bedtime now, since it’s past 11 and my body currently thinks bedtime is 9:30pm, an arrangement which I rather like…

Tomorrow I should probably go to the prefecture about a carte de sejour, since Paul is house-hunting and Martin is enrolling in his units, though we’re meant to be meeting at Anas’s tomorrow evening. This is going to be fun. We’re already planning road trips – Anas wants to go to Montpellier, in the south of France, plus he can show us around Switzerland and Martin around Germany – and Martin and I are planning a trip to Disneyland Paris once I’m off crutches, since we both love Disneyland. Anas is doing everything he possibly can to derail the expedition, since he knows he’s getting dragged along and he HATES Disneyland. Like I said, this is going to be fun!