Ce jour d'été à Besac

Salutations!

I’d almost started in French there, having changed salut to an English word. I think this is a good sign! I’m feeling very French these last few days, although having spoken it too little since the language of choice for me and my Erasmus friends is English. Yet, sometimes I stubbornly pretend not to understand them in order to have them speak the language we’re all here to learn.

So, stuff has in fact happened since my last entry. Fun stuff and less fun stuff. Up to you to judge to which following events ought to be categorized.

I picked my courses! Next to an utterly French Daniel you may also expect one conversant with the basics of French law, for I shall be doing Introduction au droit et droit civil, Droit constitutionnel and Histoire du droit. The schedule of my period abroad has been established.
In normal circumstances I would have started my studies last week, yet these are not normal circumstances. For I find myself in the land of strikes, something France is deservingly well-known for.. There have been student strikes in June last year which rendered it impossible for there to be resits…. And yes these have to be taken now, postponing the start of the new academic year by a week. Hurray!

Although the euphoria of this week off is wearing off since this morning I started my first course! Although keeping my cool, I was in fact sort of nervous thinking “Perhaps I cannot understand the teacher! Perhaps he’s going to ridicule me in front of litterly hundreds of people!” My French sucks!” Fortunately I managed to grasp the essence of it. It was however only an introductory class, more war stories to come! Righto.

Here on campus I'm part of this relatively big group of Erasmus students, mainly comprising of those that took the same language course as I did. We have this little tradition (yes after 2 weeks) on one given school day evening which is to be reffered to as either Vodka night or night of beverage of your choice. Last Thursday it was my turn to release my room. Or better said, release people onto my room. The rooms here are 9m2, so that should give you an impression of how many can fit in there.
I had anticipated on a certain number of people, whom I had invited. Yet a good friend had invited other people earlier that day. ("word vomit", bless her). So when the night started and my friend called me to the open the flat door I was told that 'some more' people were going to come up. 2 minutes later I found myself standing at the door shaking hands with 15 strange men, and then of course there was the actual invited crowd. I think I’ve broken a campus record here. Anyway, at one point the group split up and separate clusters of people went off to different rooms since circumstance rendered us no personal bubble. It ended up being good fun anyway!!

Friday evening we went to the an infamous discotheque(being in the largest in the whole region)in the nearby city of Dole. The Erasmus organization hired busses to bring us to the location and back. This place was weird and amazing at the same time. There were rooms for separate music categories like salsa/r&b, poppy and trance/dance. The thing was, these rooms were very strangely designed, like Disney land or something with weird little houses and stuff giving you the impression you’re in some freaky twilight zone. The beer being priced accordingly. Yet it in fact added to the experiences and the night was also great fun (see pictures) and we’re defo going there again ;)

On Sunday we went to…Dijon! There was a special price offer for train tickets..it being Dijon-day or whatever. We went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts for artsy things and visited loads of gorgeous churches (photos). In one there someone was singing accompanied by organ music, absolutely beautiful :') For the rest of the day we visited this beautiful parc, random cafés and just sort of strutted down the rues de Dijon, French style. And oyeah, I bought mustard! DUH.

Lovely, but now the work really starts…

Des câlineries, mes petits.

En train de m'installer

SO. As I’ve told most of you, the coming few months I’ll be doing a student assistant position next to studying at uni. I will help a Dutch teacher, Madame Pascal, with her Dutch studies. Last Monday we had a little rendez-vous, which sounds romantic, yet this is the French word for an appointment.
She is perfectly nice and very helpful and got me looking forward to the day I’ll be starting to help her out. We went for coffee and she gave me a heads up about what will happen and what is expected of me. I will basically be “soutien”, which is support/help. I'll be supporting students with Dutch grammar (which is actually kind of silly if you’re not brought up with it)…there are so many things and rules we take for granted. For example the “ch” as in “gracht” is in fact terribly difficult to master if you’re French.

Anyway. I also have to do little exposés about Dutch culture, at which I’m totally at liberty. Little presentations about Friesland and other provinces…typical Dutch stuff. It’ll be lovely I hope. And if my “students” give me sh*t, I will just take out my ruler and show some Dutch authority, Cartman style.

Tuesday was not as lovely though. It was the day of the general journée d’accueil for Erasmus students. I will spare both you and myself in leaving behind details, yet it came down to this: you had to pencil yourself in if you’re supposed to register with the Arts and Languages faculty, yet I’m doing law courses and therefore I thought I had to register with the faculté de droit et gestion. That was wrong since my studies at home are languages I had to in fact register with the first …but no worries for I realised and fixed it in time.

There was also the meeting you had to arrange with your coordinator…with whom you arrange the modules you’ll be doing and “stuff”. This was nuisance prime cause numéro un. Nobody seemed to know who that was and the teachers (I think to merely get rid of me) told me to address myself to various people, all of whom denied their coordinatorship. Being totally confused and lost, I decided to just e-mail the person I thought I needed to contact and she in the end told me who really actually was my coordinatrice: Madame Pascal.

Although a lovely person, a complete and utterly misinformed one. Yes, she didn’t even know herself and this should give you a picture of my frustration and lack of feasible registering. And I had to find this out..in French. I think my French is pretty ok..yet if the occasion rises I struggle and people look at me as if I were either an imbecile, or from Saturn. Yet, it is these little stories that stimulate your learning and in retrospect it gave me and my friends a laugh..after having calmed down of course. Plus other Erasmi have had similar situations, the which makes me feel slightly less incompetent.

Other than this, my week’s been very nice. The weather is gorgeous and I have found a group of people that I feel comfortable with and who are very cool :) It’s litterly partying every night, which is so unlike me but for some reason I find myself “me coucher” way past bed time. And of course tonight’s no exception!

Bises chéris

Je suis arrivé, il y a une semaine

“I have arrived!” he mentions days and days later. Yes, I’m safe and sound in beautiful, and I do mean that in the broadest sense of the word, Besançon. This town is gorgeous and so vivacious. But before I get on about how I got here and what it’s like I have to tell you that it’s just not been possible for me to post anything, I’ve been busy constantly and when I’ve been too knackered to do anything.

Sunday morning the time had come: I was going to France by train. My parents were kind enough to drop off at the station. The journey from Breda to Rotterdam and from there to Paris Nord went fine. I was sitting next to two nice girls with whom I had a chat or 2. In Paris I had to transfer via subway to another train station. At this train station I had to wait an hour or so and I went outside to relax a little. I love the feeling I had, being in romantic Paris and utterly free. Except of course for the 25 kilos of luggage I had to lug around.

While I was enjoying my little boisson, I saw these

guys walking about. Didn't really know how to

feel, reassured or scared.

French pidgeon

The journey from Paris to Dijon and from there to Besançon I was accompanied by a very nice lady who was kind enough to give me some pointers about Besançon, since she lived there. Also, after having arrived she helped me figure out the bus system, which is absolutely horrid. I do not like to flame public transport, yet this way of getting around can seriously use some structure. Monday it took me an hour to get to school..in hindsight I could’ve pulled it off in 15 minutes. What can I say, it’s an intricate system and my sense of direction isn’t all that great.

Quickly enough I found my way to the campus premises and to the building I had to go in order to get the room keys and what not. The fact that everyone around me was speaking fluent French, I have to say, was slightly unsettling. These were supposed to be Erasmus students (later, as it turns it out also students from former French colonies)!

After having settled in I got some groceries and went to check the premises and surroundings. It’s kind of cute actually, everyone here has there little room of 9m2 and it’s sort of a community where you quickly enough get to know people. The campus experience, this is the real deal.

Monday morning had arrived and I had slept well enough. I went on my way to the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée and I was ready for my intensive French course. Thanks to the fact that I had taken completely the wrong bus and didn’t transfer to the right one, I arrived late, if only for 15 minutes. Yet, I didn’t care for I had arrived. I went to the desk and the lady told me to go to the 5^th floor. She also pointed to the signs everywhere stating that the language course takes place there. I had seen these signs, yet wanted to make sure that it was actually correct by asking her. Hence I went to the 5^ieme étage. I took a seat and everything seemed normal enough. I started talking to people around me who were also Erasmus students and there for the week course. The fact that our names (mine and those of two others) weren’t mentioned during the name calling and that they told us that the course was for three weeks, seemed peculiar to us. It turned out, at the desk that we were in the wrong course. We had to go to a room on the 3^rd floor where others Erasmus students had already had ¾ hour of class. Such a great start!

During the break I quickly enough had conversations with nice people and I’ve been hanging around with them since!

Anyway.

To make things short, I’m just going to give you a summary of things that happened:

- Made cool Erasmus friends that also live on the same premises.

- In my course there were two girls that go to the same school and faculty as I do and none of us had seen each other before in our lifes. I would say it’s kind of strange to meet one another like this.

- The food at the Uni restaurants is pitiful and there’s never a veggy alternative.

- Vegetarianism in general in France is close to impossible. I’m at the point of considering eating fish. Which is so not happening, yet resorting to expensive yet o so fabulous Subway is not either. Perhaps eat cheese a lot? Expect a fat me at return.

- The course was very intense but also very helpful. The teacher said my level was at C1 (A1 being beginner and C2 fluent speaker).

- We went out at this really cool club and the night was awesome.

- Although I miss people and my cats at home already, I’m quite fine here.

Till the next blog and,

À bientôt!

Pretty room view!

Less pretty room view!

I didn't even know I was going to

have this lavabo. Nice surprise!

Frigo!

Second day. I had forgotten to buy a mug for my

instant coffee, so I used a tupperware dish.

I think this is a new low.

I'm so happy with my little bouilloire

and my cup and my coffee.

It's the little things in life that count.