Studies of everything

So I'm writing this from my hotel room in Chartres, staring out the window at the city as I sit on the bed. I'm sure for most of you this then begs the question: what am I doing in a hotel room in Chartres? I'll get to that in a moment, but before I start in on the chaotic but momentous events of today, I need to provide an account of my first week of classes at Sorbonne, which is now a good day overdue (and not looking likely to happen unless I do it tonight!).

My uni week starts on a Wednesday afternoon. My free time so far, of which I admit I've had a fair bit, has mostly been given over to administrative tasks - shopping to stock up my wardrobe, kitchen and pantry; completing documentation for France or Sorbonne, slowly; and generally acquainting myself with the city, not to mention a good deal of cycling work. I put all this aside on mid-morning on Wednesday and headed into the 5th, since classrooms would be published in the foyer of Sorbonne during the first week. I checked my classroom and then headed across the road for lunch, since I was starving. I was also a few hours early. Given I have no idea how anything operates around here, I've deemed it wise to allow plenty of extra time for important things like trains and classes - where possible, at least.

I dropped into the bank to pick up my new bank card, visited a few shops that I'd been interested in around the 5th arrondissement, and still had an hour or so to kill, so I headed for my favourite hideout in the 5th, Saint-Medard, for a little while. Finally it was getting close to four o'clock, so I tripped back to Sorbonne and headed to the classroom number indicated. Of course, when I wrote my timetable in my notebook, I should really have noted the class NAMES next to the codes. I had no idea which class I was walking into!

It became evident pretty quickly that I was in the literature/culture class called 'Sacred Miracles, Profane Miracles' (yes, they explore the oddest concepts in their classes at Sorbonne - much more delightfully eccentric than Monash!) It also became evident that the girl next to me had as little idea as I did of what was going on - yes, an exchange student! Aida hails from Barcelona and had two other Spanish friends in the class too. But wait - there's more. It turns out the lovely Swedish-born Ana who studies in the US while her family lives in the UK was, obviously, an exchange student. I suspect there were more than just the five of us, too. We made it clear to the teacher that we were all exchange students (and therefore have mediocre French and little to no clue of what was going on), though the teacher was unyielding on the methodologies that the French students learned in earlier years of their degrees and which would be needed for our assessments. None discouraged, we all headed home, where I cooked up a late dinner (three-hour class finishing at 7pm means I get home a little after 8) and called it a day.

Thursday started a little earlier - classes started at 2pm. After my usual morning tasks I packed my bag and raced out the door so I wouldn't be late to class. It wasn't until I got to the metro that I realised my problem - having left at 11.40am would get me there by 1pm, not 2pm. I took the opportunity to head to the CROUS canteen and have a leisurely lunch by myself, re-reading Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride which I'd finished the day before (and yes, I'm aware I'm a very fast reader!) Stopping for a hot chocolate at the uni canteen, I was a little late for class, mostly because I wasn't sure which of the two Spanish classes was mine and I was a little too terrified to ask anyone - assuming, that is, that anyone I could have asked would have known anything.

Spanish class was kind of unexciting - the teacher spoke beautiful polished French for the first half of the class as he explained assessments, requirements and so on. When he finally did switch to Spanish, having described a curriculum that sounded like everything I covered in first year, he handed out a small excerpt from a Spanish novel that even I found a little difficult. Even in class here they send mixed messages. Again, I made sure to inform the teacher that I was an exchange student, etc., and though I'd imagined that this would be the one class where my French ability wouldn't matter, since we'd all be in the same boat (more or less) when it came to our Spanish, I guess my imagination needs a tweak. The grammar textbooks that he recommended were all based on French (hello, Schaums' grammars!) and even the vocab explanations were all given in French!

I ran into Lisanne as class ended - she was in the same Spanish level but the class after me. I had to run, though, since I had another class directly after, thankfully also on the third floor. I had finally found the room, or so I thought, when a face jumped out at me - Paul. I hadn't seen him for a week either, but I had no time to chat - I had to get to class. Upon finally realising that the door opened inwards (oops...) I was thankfully only a minute or two late, to be expected in the first week. At least I was doing better than the cinema kids who all wandered in thinking it was their class...

The teacher was lovely - one of those vibrant, happy people who just never seems to get down. She gave us a short quiz designed partly to give her some weekend reading material but also to see how much we knew about French literature (oh, the class was Contemporary Narrative Fiction, by the way). I wrote on my quiz that while I could hold my own on the topic of contemporary English-language or Australian literature, I knew nothing about contemporary French literature and was here to learn. I had a little trouble following a lot of what was said, maybe because I was feeling really tired and the lovely teacher really was speaking very fast. I gave her the standard speech after class about being an exchange student, not having a brilliant grasp of French and therefore being a slow reader, and Sabrinelle, who apparently has a very unique name even in France, seemed quite pleased to have an Australian student and was very sympathetic with my potential difficulties, telling me not to hesitate to raise my hand and ask for help if I was struggling. Reassured, it was home again for an early night before Friday morning's class.

Friday started at 7am, definitely not my favourite time to start the day. I was out the door by 10 to eight and on my way to uni, arriving with just enough time to check my classroom and be waiting when the preceding class finished and ours filed in (8am class? Really?). I liked this teacher almost from the get-go. She spoke very clearly and not too fast, and even as she outlined the course I was getting excited. History of the Orthography of the French Language, before I forget. It seemed surprisingly popular, too, as more and more people kept filing in until we ran out of chairs and tables. Our teacher seemed a little taken aback, but simply told us to make sure we were enrolled so that our marks would officially count. We got straight into it, examining a copy of a letter from George Sands to Gustave Flaubert in which Sands made three of the 'orthographic errors' about which he was so vocally critical in others! Also, you've got to love a class whether the teacher gets distracted and goes off on a tangent about regional accents in class, using students to give examples as well as incorporating the accent of her native region following a discussion about....I can't remember what. It was all fascinating to me, though, since I know the English-language equivalents of most things we discussed (like the first known written record of the language - the epic Beowulf in English, in French the Sermon de Strasbourg) but the French is a whole fascinating undiscovered country. This is definitely shaping up to be my favourite class.

I dropped into Carrefour again on my way home, picking up some things that I can get at Franprix in Le Bourget and some notebooks and folders for uni. Spending the afternoon in more of the administrative tasks (and preparations for Paris-Tours this weekend), I headed out again around 8.30pm for the RER station. Martin had invited some people over for pre-drinks before heading out to a party, and since his nearest metro station had turned out to be also an RER station that was 20 minutes away on my line, I wanted to catch up with my friends. The walk from the station felt as long as the train trip, though (but that could just have been because I had no idea where I was going) and I was nearly ready to kill Martin when I arrived at his building to be told his apartment was on the fifth floor up five flights of rickety wooden stairs!

I made it without dying, though, and I saw Paul and Lisanne as soon as I walked in the door. The other two people there quickly introduced themselves, Simone and Chris from - you guessed it - Germany! The language was therefore a strange hybrid of English, French and German - Martin in particular would speak in very rapid German, insert a three-word sentence in English without pausing and then use a French word for something else a minute later. They were also very amused by my gobsmackedness at how much they knew about random aspects of Australian or Anglophone culture - I'm aware that English-language music is very popular in Europe, but knowing Green Day and Oasis on the guitar or singing Red Hot Chili Peppers word perfect - really? The bit that really floored me was that Chris was acquainted with Waltzing Matilda - and then, before I could blink, he goes on to reference Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning! I feel so culturally ignorant only knowing Anglophone culture, music and history.

Now as towhy I'm in Chartres this evening and not catching up with the Germans at Nuit Blanche before the early night I always want but never get, it began with a phone call. Well, several phone calls, actually, which I slept through at 7am today. I was blissfully asleep until almost 9 o'clock, when I got out of bed and sat down at my computer with a bowl of cereal. I logged on to all the usual suspects - Hotmail, Facebook and Skype, for my morning convo with Down Under, though no-one seemed to notice I'd come online for our usual weekend phone call. I started reading my emails while I waited for them to return to the computer and accidentally came across what Mother had been calling to tell me.

On a whim, Mum had asked Jessi Braverman, Orica-GreenEDGE's press officer, if I could ride with Joachim the soigneur in the GreenEDGE team car for Paris-Tours as part of the official media contingent. Jessi consulted the GreenEDGE DS for Paris-Tours, Lionel Marie, and amazingly Jessi came back with a yes! The catch was that Lionel wanted me at the race start an hour early. Unfortunately Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais is nigh on inaccessible by public transport, hence I'd already dismissed the idea and was heading to the race finish at Tours. There were no buses from the nearest town, Chartres, before midday and in fact no trains to Chartres arriving before 9:30, either. This meant that I needed to stay the night in the area so I could make my way to Chateauneuf early Sunday morning. An examination of my press pack also revealed a list of team hotels, so with some quick internet work I lined up a train to Chartres, a room in the hotel where GreenEDGE would be staying, the bus tour I wanted for Monday morning in Tours (I already had a hostel booked for Sunday night) and a train ticket from Tours back to Paris.

Anyway, it took me too long to get to Gare Montparnasse and buy a ticket to make the 3pm train, but by then it was a short wait for the 4pm. One note on the trains - double. Decker. Wicked cool. Naturally I chose the upper level, crutches and all. After a misty ride through rainy, condensation-obscured Eure-et-Loire, I descended the train, to use the French term, at Chartres and headed for the bus stop. Successfully finding the right bus, I boarded, bought a ticket and got out at the stop the driver indicated, following the directions he'd given me to find the right street. The woman he was talking to was correct - it was a long walk, but the misting rain didn't bother me too much.

The hotel, when I found it, wasn't snazzy, but it's clean, perfectly adequate and warm and dry. Dinner was the ever-so-sophisticated Macca's next door - not fancy, I know, but it was close and they even did vegetarian for me!  So far no sign of GreenEDGE, though I can see the Saxobank and BMC team trucks across the road from the hotel in a warehouse yard. Anyway, if not beforehand then I'll see them at the race start in Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais once I've picked up my official press pass! Keep your eyes peeled for a post from Tours tomorrow night or else the race report and/or articles to appear on Peloton Cafe the following morning!