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.
Inspiration's Waiting Room 