Carte d’Etudiant, S’il Vous Plaît

It’s funny the things you treasure in times like these that you would otherwise take for granted. I was so hungry yesterday morning, because all I had were three biscuit packs taken from church at the Midland Hotel in Bradford the day before. I could only drink water with my hand from the tap in the bathroom. Buying food was almost exhilarating – I had lunch: a baguette, of course, along with some cheese and a bag of apples. That would last me several meals at least. Now I’ve just returned from buying some juice, tomatoes, and jam, all of which are so precious. New tastes to add to my palate after several meals of bread, cheese, and apples, as if I’d never tasted them before! And getting a plastic cup was like unlocking an achievement in a video game like Minecraft: drinking ability acquired! All these are thoughts I will soon forget as I settle into the confidence of routine, which naturally I long for in these uncertain times, but as in the past I’ve given others the advice to enjoy the uncertainty, for it is fleeting; to ‘live the questions’, I must heed my own advice now.

This morning we went to see the international office woman to get our signed documents back to release our ERASMUS funds, as well as obtain our student cards, a coveted item that would seemingly unlock all else, foremost being the internet. The woman had not signed the documents yet – she is, after all, very busy – and told us to come back the following day. Then another girl, the girl who’d done her best to take us through the blue form, tried to help us get our student cards.

The problematic requirement was called something like responsabilité civile – health insurance of some sort, I believe. That was what the Americans had been arguing about the day before, because their uni had already made them buy insurance and they understandably didn’t want to pay more. ERASMUS students were supposed to only have to pay €5, well, €20 when you add in some other charge, but they were saying we had to have an EU identity card, otherwise we too would have to pay the full €200. No thank you. I was mentally preparing to put my foot down when the American guy, the one who speaks French well, pulled out his international student identity card (ISIC, which you can get from STATravel which entitles you to numerous discounts) and said he had insurance with that card. Now, I had that card as well, having applied for it during the summer for the discounts on flights and other things abroad. But I didn’t know anything about insurance. Nevertheless I pulled mine out and said, ‘I’ve got that as well.’ That seemed acceptable; the international office woman photocopied them (every time a French person is willing to photocopy documents rather than telling us we need to bring photocopies, even though they have a photocopy machine right behind them, I rejoice, for it’s a rare occurrence) and we trooped down to the payment office.

But I knew we weren’t yet in the clear and stayed on prepared-to-put-my-foot-down mode for when the payments woman balked at a card she didn’t recognise. Miraculously, that didn’t happen, and we got away with paying only €20. Well, I say ‘we’, but the Americans probably really did have insurance with their cards – I doubt I do, I didn’t pay what they did. Thank goodness I ordered that card, though.

Confession: The French have not won me over to their bureaucratic, multiple copies required, filled-out-in-triplicate way of doing things. I tend to think that as long as I can get through the process and obtain the end item or state that is required, it doesn’t really matter if I actually have what they’re demanding – isn’t it just the government making people pay for things they’ll only need in the rarest of circumstances? Or institutions covering themselves so they won’t be liable in any case whatsoever? And then even if young French (who, from what I’ve seen so far, hate it as much as we do) resolve to get into politics to change it, by the time they get to a place where they could potentially change it, they themselves are benefitting from it too much to want to change it anymore. Sly fat cats.

Probably not very morally upright or even completely factually viable, but I am fairly exasperated. You’ll see why in a bit.

Back to the story. Again, I couldn’t pat myself on the back quite yet. We had all the required documents, but we still had to make the actual application. We went upstairs to deuxième étage and joined the queue. Thankfully it wasn’t long. Like at the picnic yesterday, I felt I should talk to people, felt it would be a good idea, but couldn’t quite work up the will. Other than those in our crew. Finally my turn came and I went in. I decided to ask, as endearingly as I could, ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ She looked at me in a sort of cute, helpless sort of way, shaking her head. Guess not. Oh well. Hope there are no problems.

She was stumped with the ISIC as well, and kept asking her colleague things. The colleague was a bit better at English, but not by much, so it ended up being the other student applying at that moment, a German girl, who asked me in English what they needed to know, then told them my answers in French. Germans are so reliable. I bet they’re efficient with their bureaucracy as well. I won’t deny that the thought, ‘Maybe I should’ve studied abroad to Germany after all’ has come to mind more than a few times over the course of this week, but I’m not a quitter.

In the end they accepted the card, but not before sending me back up to the international office woman to get her to photocopy my passport. Thankfully they saved my spot in the queue. The other things required were, of course, two identity photos, which – this frustrates me quite a bit – are so that they can stick one on the application form and scan one for the student card. Why don’t they just scan it and then stick it on the form, and therefore only need one!? I bought eight photos in the UK before coming, wishing I could buy less, and now I’m almost out.

Oh well. No matter. I was on my way to the guy who prints the cards. Could this be it? At long last, was this fabled mythical item, with all the riches and glory that accompanied it, about to be mine? I imagined myself celebrating with hands in the air as if I were back at Far East junior year, right after we won the football championship on penalties. He had me write my name on a list. He put my photo in the scanner. He stamped a single sheet of paper five times and gave it to me. He stuck a blank card in the card-printing machine.

Ennnh. The card came out with half my face blacked out. Ink problems? He adjusted the roll inside the machine and put another card in. That one came out with a thick black line on it obscuring some of the information. He looked at me. I looked at him. No way.

“Vendredi.”

What!! Come back Friday!? It’s only Tuesday! What could possibly take three days about replacing an ink cartridge?? But of course I had none of the French to express these feelings, so I could only muster, “Vendredi…d’accord.”

Then it got worse. As I left the room the girl behind me, the awesome, helpful German girl, sat down and got her card. just. fine.

What.

And everyone after that, including the people with me, got theirs just fine.

What. What. What.

Most of you will be pleased to know I didn’t pantomime the rage roiling within me. I’ve hated foreigners in Japan (don’t take that the way it sounds, foreigners) long enough to know that throwing a fit gets you nowhere, and generally just confirms stereotypes. I’m not about confirming stereotypes, as far as I’m able. So I left with the others. Vendredi? Vendredi.

I did also have that sheet he stamped five times, which contained all the same information as the student card would, so maybe I could procure internet with just that. Our group returned to our Arsenal accommodation and asked about internet. Apparently it wasn’t so much that the student card was the magical item as that the numbers on it became our login username and password details. But the accommodation internet was not, as we’d believed, wi-fi; we would need ethernet cables to connect. Joy. Another thing to buy.

We went shopping. In addition to Monoprix, we’d also found an electronics place yesterday where we were able to by power adaptors (after all my trying to think of how to ask where they were in the shop, the word turned out to be the same in French as in English. Recollections of Japanese…) so we returned there and some of the others bought ethernet cables. I decided to wait until I had my full funding – the soap, shampoo, toothpaste, towel, duvet, and duvet cover that I also bought today nearly cleaned me out. In fact I had to borrow money from my American friend when he and I went food shopping afterward. Not ideal.

[This next bit I wrote this afternoon, whereas the rest I’m writing this evening – or later days and changing the ‘date published’ on WordPress, but never mind – so it is representative merely of my state at that time, not my current state or general state in relation to being in France. It is a comparison of my financial situations in successive study/work experiences.]

The first time around, the only challenge was finding an ATM – there was one in the commuters’ lounge, but it was often out of cash, and the next nearest one was at Wawa’s, about a twenty minute walk away. So I found myself withdrawing large amounts of cash when I was in downtown Philadelphia – two things unlikely to be found together in the same sentence outside of a crime report – to take back to campus. But I’d already had the account, and it already had savings in it.

The following year was a piece of cake as I was earning money and withdrawing from the same account. The most complicated bit was creating that account in Japanese, and that wasn’t that hard – world’s best customer service, for the win. Plus, it being Japan, there was no need to think twice about carrying around large amounts of cash in my wallet.

The second time around (third time, yes, but second uni) was more complicated – I took a lot of pounds with me and deposited them in an account once I’d made one – which wasn’t overly difficult and everything was set up and running, including my debit card, that same day – and that was that until it ran out. There were a few days of panic, but then my parents and I discovered that it was super easy to do a bank transfer from Japan to a Lloyds TSB account in the UK, and I was set for the next year and a half.

This time, the third uni, I’m close to pulling my hair out, in a quiet, internal sort of way. Maybe it’s just that I’m in the middle of it. I thought I’d be receiving my ERASMUS grant almost immediately after arriving. How naive of me – I now know not to expect anything to happen immediately in France [this is the outburst I asked you to take with a grain of salt in yesterday’s post]. As of now I have forty pounds in my UK account. I have plenty of money in my US account, but it doesn’t have a chip so I don’t think I can use it in ATMs! I just need to find something that works and stick with that – or borrow money from friends till the grant comes through.

I can’t help but feel that I am living in an interim period. The globalisation of banking is still playing catch-up to the globalisation of travel. Or maybe I’m just stupid and don’t know where to look. I hear Citibank is good. They call themselves the world’s first global bank. I’m not really in a position to switch everything over to them at the moment, however.

I admit it, I’m stressed out. It’s not consuming me, but sometimes it feels like it could if I let it. It’s not like there are concrete things that are seriously bad, I’m just out of my comfort zone. And this summer I got used to being sat firmly on the couch in the centre of my comfort zone. This is good for me. This is good for me, I keep telling myself. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to scream sometimes. Why am I doing this again? Is there something at the end of the tunnel that makes this worth it? French mastery? What use will the language be if I hate the people and policies by the end of it?

Hah, I won’t hate them. I might just need a long break from them.

[Okay, now that the minor breakdown with brief philosophical interlude to reflect on globalisation is done with, let’s carry on with the account of the day’s events.]

That evening, our group (myself and the two I came from Bradford with, the three Americans, and the other two English girls we met) went out for dinner. We walked through the area called Saint-Pierre, where a lot of bars and some clubs and hordes and hordes of students are; carried on along the river, where we saw even more students doing something – either a freshers initiation or some sort of protest – and found a nice quiet place a bit farther along. As we were all trying to save money, I wouldn’t call it the height of the French dining experience – hopefully that is yet to come – but it was good food, and a good time.

It’s going to be a good year – I’m going to enjoy it. Perhaps I didn’t spend enough time during the summer anticipating this year, as I did before I came to England. It’s important for me to make up my mind that I’m going to love a place, because if I get caught off-guard (as I have, somewhat) it’s easy to descend into bitterness, but I don’t want to live like that. I will enjoy my wine and my cheese, everyone that I meet, and every bumbling mistake and crucified pronunciation on the path to fluency.

Oh, and I should mention – seeing as it’s probably the true cause of my improved mood – that I was able to use my US credit card to withdraw euros from an ATM on our way to the restaurant. That was such a relief. Didn’t need a chip after all, the dreadfully outdated swipe bar sufficed. Thank goodness I changed the PIN when I was able to something I can remember so we don’t have a repeat performance of Turkey! They’ll probably whack me with a massive overseas charge, and since I don’t yet have internet I haven’t seen yet what that charge is, but at least I won’t be out on the street starving. That is unless they cut off my access because it’s coming from a new overseas location. But this should get my by until the ERASMUS funds come in, which will hopefully be by the end of this week.

So today turned out to be another productive day, though no student card. I at least have a full set of bedding, which is probably the most key to my current physical and emotional well-being. That and money. Does that say something about me I don’t want to be said?

Premier Jour

Wow. A lot happened today. I’m gonna need to be diligent with this blog if I want to keep up with it all. But on the other hand, things will slow down after the first week or maybe even the first few days, so I won’t always need to keep up this pace. However, I know from past experience that if I leave the writing till later it won’t get done.

One thing I didn’t mention about our arrival was that we didn’t just find our rooms and conk out. As we came to our floor we heard voices speaking English, glorious anglais! I hadn’t realised it would be that much of a relief. After dropping off our bags we came back to the room we’d heard it from and introduced ourselves. It was three Americans, two girls and one guy, from Utah, who’d just arrived the previous day. So we weren’t alone. After talking for a while (commiseration makes for great conversation), we decided to go to registration, orientation, and shopping together the next day.

That night was not ideal – clothing as a pillow is never as soft as clothing as clothing – but I have those nights every once in a while. It cooled down quite a bit during the night as well, but thankfully the shower was hot and high-pressure. That makes such a difference. I can take on the world after a good shower.

We five met and went downstairs to the ‘Administration’, where the day’s troubles began. Already at 8:30 there were students queueing for this, though I didn’t know what it was for, only that we had to do it and internet was one thing we would get. Our turn finally came, and we went in. The woman looked at us. We looked at her. I had absolutely no idea what to say. I had been hoping all the students would’ve been about the same business so that by the time it rolled around to us she would just push forms at us, or something of the like. Clearly something in that thought process was flawed. She exclaimed something to her colleague which, though I couldn’t make out any of it, had the distinct vibe of “why come to this country when you don’t even speak a word of the language!” Fair point, but chill…s’il vous plait (I am representing her unfairly. I believe she is a very nice lady and very gracious to be dealing with such inept foreigners as us, but not being able to converse with her properly, I couldn’t tell you with complete certainty. Another thing is probably that French exclaim more than the English or Japanese, so though they’re not upset, they sound it to the uncomprehending ear).

Thankfully, the Americans were dealing with the other woman behind the counter, and though the two girls don’t speak much French, the guy does, in fact he’s doing the all-classes-in-French course and has been a godsend in all of this, as I’m sure you’ll agree after reading all our ordeals. Somehow, we finally got that form pushed at us – what else would we have been there for? We managed to fill it out, and returned it with two identity photos (which I swear is a mantra for the French).

Then she demanded rent and a deposit. Oh. I guess I should’ve been ready for this, seeing as it had been in the correspondence, but the fact was I only brought about a hundred euros in cash, and that was to be spent on vital furnishments and sustenance. It was nowhere near enough anyway. I thought about arguing; well, stalling at least. The only other option I had was credit card, and I’m terrified of international transaction charges. Plus, the credit card in question had never been used nor even validated by phone, as I’d just received it in the mail. I went for it anyway.

It put up no problems (I suppose the sometimes-convenient, usually-lethal truth is that banks and credit cards seldom resist expenditure) and required only a signature, not even the PIN, which I now know, contrary to my infamous Turkey experience of last summer. But I was worried about the repercussions of a €471 international, foreign-currency payment.

They told us some other cryptic information, some other blasted hoop to jump through, and nothing about the internet. Some of us went to the ‘Accueil’, the meaning of which I’m still not solid on, though I see it everywhere, to get the ‘etat de lieu‘ (state of the place) form that the Americans had warned us about the night before. These were supposed to be filled out upon arrival and then compared to the state when we left, to ensure we didn’t leave any damages uncompensated for (obviously the key being to not rate the room too highly at the beginning). This form was a monster. Something like eight pages, basically requiring an assessment of every individual thread of the carpet, among every other aspect of the room. Seriously. They listed the features of the room – the table, the other table; this shelf, that shelf, the shelf you didn’t even know was a shelf; the skirting board, the wardrobe, the TV plug-in I didn’t know I had and had no way of testing, and then had us tick ‘new’, ‘good’ (‘bon etat‘, the one that all the items inevitably fell into, except the lavabo (sink), which leaked), ‘used’, or ‘poor’. Needless to say, the French-English dictionary got some exercise. We postulated that their intent was to make it so long that tenants would soon become exasperated and just bon-etat everything, which is of course what befell us. One piece of good news was that most of the pages were the kind that register what’s written on the page above, for the purpose of producing copies. What they need so many copies for, I have no idea, but it was a relief to only have to fill out about three pages, which were nevertheless meticulous and painful. You would never guess from the length of that form how small our rooms are (not that I’m complaining, I like small, and every inch of space is used maximumly efficiently. Or it would be, if I had stuff to fill it with).

(I didn’t write this as chronologically as you are now reading it, so I will interject here that, though somewhere further down you will find me complaining that the French get nothing done immediately and that the accommodation provided next to no amenities for us, these two outbursts are unjustified. My leaky sink was repaired within one working day, and they did furnish the room with a mini-fridge and a lamp, not to mention a desk, a chair, a bed, a mattress, a window, a radiator, a shower, a toilet, a sink, carpet, one orange wall, various plug-ins, and copious shelving. Count my blessings, I must.)

We submitted these monstrosities and headed to the orientation, where supposedly ‘all would be revealed’. Thankfully (you’ll notice that word coming up a lot in these accounts; that and ‘infuriatingly’ constitute, I feel, an apt description of my first few days in Toulouse) the Americans knew where it was and we had no problems en route. Honestly it was nice walking into that room and seeing how many other foreign students there were. It was a little less nice finding out that over three-quarters of them spoke French seemingly fluently, but, you know, silver linings and clouds and all that.

A man spoke first, all in French, and that didn’t bode well. A few others spoke, and only one was a native English speaker. His voice was like a gushing shower of cool water in a hot parched desert, though I probably wouldn’t say that to his face. I guess it was his language more than his voice, just so there’s no confusion. And I don’t want to make it sound like I hate the French language and think that English is the best language in the world. I love- well, quite like how French sounds, and desperately wish I were more fluent in it – that’s half the point of this year. As for English, well, I am fond of it (okay, I do delight in it), but modern English does often feel rather functional, simplified, mongrelised, vulgar. Perhaps it’s worth adding that Japanese is more square, traditional, weighty – such that when it is colloquialised and used tersely or even offensively, it is far more striking. Isn’t it amazing how intertwined language and culture are?

Anyhow, the product of that morning orientation was some questions answered, other questions formed, two other English girls met, and of course, more forms to fill out. We made an appointment with the bank HSBC, which is quite big over here as well, it seems (not as big as BNP Paribas, however). Pity it couldn’t have been Lloyds. Oh well. I think I will go ahead and open a French account with HSBC, just because it tends to make things easier. And who knows, I might eventually be able to make some money over here. Working at a Japanese restaurant, perhaps. Heh. I’ve seen a few already, which is more than can be said for Bradford. What I wouldn’t do for a Punjab Sweet House curry right now, though.

Oh, we also met up with the third member of Team Bradford, who was wonderfully able to show us where to go for the cryptic errand the housing administration sent us on (I can hear you thinking it, if I treated all these requirements like a video game, it would be so much more palatable. Trust me, while video games must run on the logic of the programming, the same cannot be said for French bureaucracy). We got there, knowing we never would’ve found it on our own, and sure enough, we needed our Sciences Po Toulouse acceptance letters, which I had not been able to find since arriving in France. Having brought every piece of official and unofficial paper I could ever possibly need, and more, the only explanation I could think of was that the French consulate must’ve kept it when I applied for my visa. I tried to find something equivalent in my inbox on computers they were gracious enough to allow us to use, but to no avail. I was however able to shoot off a quick email to my parents saying I was fine, which was one weight off my mind.

Sitting outside thinking I would just have to get another letter from the uni and come back, I decided to have one more look through the several folders in my backpack. For some reason which I will never know, this third search was when the letter chose to display itself. Gah. I took it in and went through the relatively quick process of making this organisation my guarantor for lodging in France.

(Again, I realise you may not be interested in this level of detail, but perhaps there’s someone out there who’s preparing to undertake exactly what I am doing now, in which case I should think this will be helpful. Beyond that, I feel that, since I’m complaining so much about the circus-level number of hoops to jump through, I have to justify my negativity with the play-by-play.)

Before that short trip was, I forgot to mention, the long-anticipated picnic (pique-nique?), my first proper meal since Sunday breakfast. Naturalement, there were pieces of baguette, cheese, and meat. All delicious, but the nectarines were by far the hit. YUM.

I knew that was the time to be socialising, meeting people, putting down roots, but the other part of me was tired. Tired of working so hard to communicate, tired of being out of my comfort zone, tired of thinking. As I a few days later overheard a female foreign student say (and she was fluent in French, which was a comfort to me), “Je suis fatiguer de penser“. I must admit that if I were at, say, Bradford, and I heard an international student say something like this, I wouldn’t have had much pity on them. They chose to do this. But now…well, my empathy XP is rising, which is one thing I need and have been praying for.

So I stuck with my English-speaking crew, and we sat on the side. It wasn’t miserable, though, it was a good time. After a while we snuck off to do the housing guarantor thing.

We got back a bit after two o’clock (quatorze-heures, the time that France, or maybe just south France, generally restarts from its lunch break), time to get help filling out the four-page blue forms they’d given us with which to procure our student cards. This, this, this was an experience.

They put the French speakers on one side of the room, and imbeciles on the other. I assume the French speakers went through it rather normally with occasional help from the international office woman at the front (though I did hear later that their process resembled ours far more than I would’ve thought). We on the other hand needed to be coddled through it line by line – as in, “Box 1, tick ‘Oui’. In the blank, write the name of your university. In the next box, write the name of your university.” And so on. I felt sorry for our helper, who seemed to be less proficient in English than the woman handling the French speakers, but I’m not one to quibble. Some boxes were easier than others, some we could skip, others were complicated enough that she decided they weren’t actually that important. All in all the entire process took about two hours. It was taxing, to say the least, and repetitive. I mean, I’m sure all the boxes said different things, but there was one part where we wrote the name of our university at least four times in a row, and to us, it seemed like the form was saying, ‘What is the name of your university? Precisely what is the name of your university? Are you sure this is the name of your university? Why don’t you write it just one more time to make sure you haven’t misspelled anything the previous three times?’ What an awful time to realise you’d been writing the wrong university the whole time.

Heh, no, I’m kidding, I didn’t do that. Come on.

(I made a joke along these lines in situ (no, that’s not French, that’s Latin for ya) but I feel it wasn’t properly received by certain lacklustre senses of humour around me at the time – I have full faith in you, esteemed readers.)

They also told we would need several other items to receive our student cards, which, we’d heard from others, were somehow connected to our ability to get internet in our rooms. Perhaps part of the problem is how active the grapevine is these days among those who speak French less than adequately. We hear, distort, and believe all sorts of things. ‘If you take your passport, two photos, this rainbow-coloured form, and a spare kidney into this shady back-alley office, you can get your whole year taken care of!’ …Tempting, I have to say, even though I just made that particular offer up.

What they actually told us we’d need in addition to the blue form and passport was, yes, you guessed it, deux photos d’identitie, and something else that we couldn’t understand and they couldn’t explain. Something to do with insurance, and having to pay. And it was in relation to this that something beautiful took place, but seeing as we couldn’t submit them until the following day, I’ll wait to go into that.

Team Bradford handed over the sheets we needed signed and sent back home to release our ERASMUS funds, then we were outta there. The Americans had to stay behind to fight for their right to not pay for another form of insurance, a battle which I later heard they won. Good on them (Oh, but just so you don’t take this as another confirmation of common American stereotypes, I believe it was actually the French international office woman stepping up to the plate for them that made the difference). Shopping time for us.

It didn’t take long to see that Toulouse is a shopping city; at least l’abord de l’université. I’ll try to get some pictures up soon, but certain streets remind me of…hmm, Tokyo, I suppose. Like Ginza. Man, I even miss Ginza. I don’t even like Ginza. Huh. Oh, where was I? Yeah, Toulouse shopping. One wide, nice street in particular just lined with clothes shops. H&M was about the only one I recognised. Unfortunately, the type of shopping we had in mind was more of the bedding and toilet paper variety. A place called Monoprix was our best find, as it sold both food and home goods, and I came away with groceries, a pillow, and a sheet that, upon opening in my room, turned out to be fitted. Which I needed, and the pillow made a world of difference, but it was again a cold night with nothing on top of me (took until the third night to get fully kitted, especially as I forgot to pick up soap and shampoo. Why is it my hair looks better when only washed with water? Doesn’t feel better though).

Okay, just one more tale from today before I conclude Full Day 1 of this self-absorbed, self-aggrandising, self-pitying, self-congratulatory series (which is probably thus because I’m backloading emotion from later days onto these early entries, for which I apologise). That evening I went knocking on doors (of people I knew) to see if they wanted to do something, like go for a drink. The American guy wasn’t in his room (or didn’t answer, although I did meet several Irish guys in the process) so I ended up just talking to the American girls. At one point, they asked something like whether my home was close to Bradford. ‘No, not close at all’ ‘So…outside England?’ ‘Yeah, take a guess.’

“Tokyo.”

Just like that. Completely random guess.

Mais oui, je suis de Tokyo.

Or was it?

Like I said, I won’t be writing up every day like in this long-winded fashion, or even any fashion. This will likely be my longest single-day entry. So much happened. More than what I’ve written. But that’s enough.

Arrivée à Toulouse

[If you happen to have the good fortune of being one of the people portrayed in the following accounts, please don’t take offence at anything written here. Just mention it to me, and I’ll in most cases happily amend it. For example, I’ve decided to avoid using names, just in case any of you happen to be on the run from the law, but I would completely understand if you wanted to get your name out there (or link it to your YouTube channel, or something). Not that I think terribly many are reading this now, but in the future, who knows? You might one day be famous – again, not that that would result from me or anything I write; just saying, I have complete confidence in you.

Disclaimer no. 2: I make no claims as to the veracity of the French interspersed throughout this writing, nor, for that matter, the English. Corrections would however be appreciated.]

We made it. I can’t take long writing this because I don’t have a power converter to be able to plug it in, and actually I won’t be able to upload this because I don’t have wifi access yet, but I thought I should quickly jot down some notes to capture the feeling of right now.

I’m sitting in what I assume will be my room for this year, in Cité Universitaire de L’Arsenal B. Something like that. It’s a neat room – small, but amazingly economic in its use of space. I’ll probably take pictures or make a video before too long, but basically you enter and have the toilet/sink/shower on your left in a room not much more than a metre square. You squeeze past the wardrobe and have about three metres by three metres with the desk in front of you facing the window and some shelves to either side. No bed. I walked in, my first thought was, neat-o (because I think thoughts like that); my second thought was, hang on, surely we’re missing something crucial here. At first I thought it was the white thing against the wall to my left, which, provided it folded down like an ironing board and then unfolded into twice its width, would offer something almost bed-size. No. It was only the radiator. Then I looked up. Ohh. There it is. Above the desk. Except…there’s only about a foot between the bed and the ceiling.

[Here’s a video tour of my new room, if the thousand words haven’t been enough.]

Obviously now it all makes sense – you pull the bed down about a metre on its track to sleep in it, then push it back up in the morning. It’s great. Of course it will be even greater once I have sheets and a pillow, but that will not be before tonight. But I figured that would be the case.

In fact I figured on doing without a lot of things this first night, like shower gel, shampoo, a large towel, and electricity (well, the ability to plug my devices in, at least). I was packed to the max already.

In hindsight there were probably things I brought that I could’ve done without – well, plenty, if you’re truly ruthless. I didn’t want to be quite that ruthless; after all, my clothing is no use to me if it’s not with me, and I definitely want to go snowboarding this year. But I’m the type of person that, told I can check-in a suitcase of 22 kg, will bring a 22.2 kg, with a 12 kg carry-on that’s only supposed to be 10. I made it through, but as I was thinking on the way, you can’t put a price on peace of mind – better to leave some leeway, even if it costs a bit more (that’s my sensible side speaking, not the side I tend to listen to). So I’m trying to move away from the push-it-to-the-very-edge, take-as-much-as-you-possibly-can mentality. Still a long way to go.

At least this time I didn’t do most of my packing through the night before I left. Since I moved from my massive mansion (that I shared with six other guys during the year but had to myself for a month at the beginning of the summer) to my pastor’s house at the beginning of July, all my England belongings were already packed and, having attempted to pack shrewdly, a lot of it I could put straight into storage and not bother with for the rest of the summer. I also had to move about a week before leaving Bradford, this time from a bigger bedroom in the house to the smaller bedroom, the smallest bedroom I have ever seen. The accommodation I’m in now, here in Toulouse, is a presidential suite compared to that room. That room was twice the size of the bed, tops. Not that I’ve ever seen a presidential suite (that is a thing, though, right?).

But that bedroom (and nothing-else-room) was completely fine for my final few days, and helpful to force me to do most of my packing in advance of my departure date. There was still a lot in the run-up, especially as I was desperately trying to fit in too much, but it wasn’t as bad as other times have been.

I apologise if you were expecting a quick run-down of my journey to Toulouse. That’s not how I tend to write. But you can skip over the reminiscings and philosophical abstractions if you must.

It was an interesting run-up; even though, like I said, I did a lot in advance, I still left a lot until the final day or two, almost as if I didn’t want to think about it, or wanted to pretend that I still had loads of time to waste (because that’s what a lot of my summer has been, unfortunately). When I was studying French or corresponding about my arrival, I would get excited – yes, excited, even – about the coming year. Other times, especially that last day, I didn’t want to leave, mostly because I didn’t want the accompanying stress and necessary planning. But I always feel that: when I have no plans of leaving, I can only think about being elsewhere, and when the time comes to leave, I want to be lazy and stay, and it’s only recently that I’ve really started to try to fight those feelings, because they’re completely unhelpful.

But leave I did. Sunday was suddenly upon me and I was scurrying around in the two hours before church, skimming off the top of my baggage, throwing some things away, weighing, worrying, wondering.

I had to take my suitcase and backpack (yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is all I brought for my new life in France; well, one year – 32.2 kg. Which I think is quite good, despite my earlier confessions) to church because I was leaving straight from there. I wasn’t too keen on that because it would mean a lot of good-byes right as I’m trying to leave, which I’ve had bad experiences with, but it turned out alright. It was actually great that I was there that last time because I got to see some people coming back for this year that I hadn’t seen in a while. The good-byes didn’t take too long, and I was soon trundling off from the Midland Hotel to Bradford Interchange.

There I encountered my first problem (ah, the ever-elusive perfect run was not to be had this time!). The ticket machine was broken (yes, THE ticket machine; ridiculous isn’t it), and it was the only place I could print out my prepaid tickets. The woman at the counter wouldn’t do it. The man trying to fix the machine told me I’d have to buy it at my first transfer station, Huddersfield. I was dubious about this – what would I tell the ticket collector on the first train, what if I could only print my tickets at the station I’d indicated online…but I continued onto the platform.

Thankfully, thankfully, I returned about ten minutes later, just to check; found the machine in totally proper working order, printed out my tickets, and boarded my train. Unlike in Japan, you and your well-being are not the primary concern of most British employees. You gotta fight for love, like Gabriella.

The rest of the train journey was uneventful. The trains came into the platforms I expected them to, and I made both my connections with time to spare. I suppose one thing of note was that between Huddersfield and Manchester I could overhear a large group of northern ladies, probably late twenties or early thirties, talking very loudly. I got a catch-up on their lives, which seemed to generally consist of clubbing and getting drunk, reminiscing about past times of clubbing and getting drunk, and discussing whether or not the others peed in the shower. I believe the general consensus was that it was acceptable. No comment. Actually, yes comment; that was essentially my last English experience before leaving the country – but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that was a fairly representative experience to remind me what I’d be missing, or a wacky one-off to send me away with confidence (another comment might be that in my place now I’m not faced with that decision as the toilet juts into the shower space).

Pulled into the airport, took my heavy suitcase on several escalators I wasn’t supposed to, found the queue for Jet2 check-in. That was where I met up with one of the two girls from Bradford Peace Studies doing the same exchange to Toulouse, with whom I fortuitously had the same flight. Though my suitcase was slightly overweight, as I said, the guy let it through, and even my carry-on wasn’t even inspected, though it was packed full of dubious materials like paper clips, drum sticks, and hair wax. I wonder if budget airlines are more lax? Although I think everyone went through the same place, not just the budget people.

Not much to tell about the flight; it was the usual parade of hawkers from start to finish, trying to get us to pay even more small fees for drinks, snacks, charity scratchcards, and duty-free items, that budget flights always are. No thank you. No screaming babies this time, though, thankfully. One thing that was very strange was that even though it was only about a two-hour flight, we landed half an hour early! How does that work? How could you possibly be that wrong in your prediction or make up that much time? A pilot could probably tell me. I certainly wasn’t complaining, though, as it meant even more daylight in which to find our accommodation, and we were successful in that. With the bus drivers I settled for key words rather than trying to formulate full sentences; felt like a bit of a cop-out but, on the other hand, I can probably count on (that) one hand the number of full French sentences I can formulate. We made it to Compans Caffarelli which I was pronouncing very wrongly, and even found our accommodation without too much trouble.

That was where some fun began. There was a girl at reception, and after some stutter-starts on our part, she asked us if we spoke Spanish. Well, I thought, if she speaks Spanish, she must speak English, especially seeing as she asked us the question in English. Nah. Not even a bit. She ended up calling a woman and we passed the phone back and forth several times. Classic foreign language country experience. Thankfully the woman on the other end (I still have no idea who she was) spoke brilliant English and took us through everything. Our names were on some list, and though I didn’t have the contract sheet I was supposed to (e-mail fail?), my travel buddy did, and we got our keys.

But before I can bring you to where we started, the description of the room as I found it, we first had to lug our luggage up the stairs to the fourth floor, which in my language is the fifth floor. No lift. This would prove to be a pattern with the French buildings, at least the ones on campus. Not only do the French seem to eschew lifts, they rejoice in stairs, putting a down case and an up case where a walkway straight across would suffice. But quirks are what make the foreign foreign, I suppose – that and the incomprehensibility of the language.

That’s half the reason I’m doing this, though. Not only do I want to learn French, I want to live – well, be forced to survive – in a country where I don’t speak the official language, something I’ve never done before despite having lived in quite a few different locations. It will be character-building, and empathy-building. To all those new missionaries, summer workers, and other foreigners who came across my path in Japan, I feel your pain. I didn’t when I was with you; mostly I enjoyed your pain, but now I feel it.

For the first time in all my travelling and studying abroad I feel like a real international student. Oh boy.