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...