I've been in France for two weeks now, I can't tell whether time is moving really quickly or incredibly slowly, it seems to be alternating between the two.
I've met a few of the french people on my corridor in halls now, and they've been very welcoming and patient with my basic french (e.g. trying to thank them for welcoming me but ending up thanking them for my spoon). The halls are quite nice but missing quite a few basics which meant a trip to IKEA on the other side of the city in the middle of a heatwave! The location is lovely though, it's right by the Loire and the walk to my uni buildings or the main shopping street is along by the river.
The first week was extremely frustrating, the inefficiency of french administration and life in general means that you can normally only get one, or if you're lucky two, things done per day, and you still end up exhausted by the end of it! But now that a lot of that is done and I've done several big shops I'm starting to feel like I can relax and actually live here.
I had two lectures this week and the rest start next week. The lecturer didn't turn up for the first one, but the second one went surprisingly well! It's 4 hours long and starts at 9am so I did lose concentration at some points, but I found that when I was concentrating I was able to understand the vast majority of what the lecturer was saying. The fact that it's ancient history also means that a lot of the words and place names are practically the same as they are in English which helps. The previous week I'd gone to a beginning of term meeting for 3rd year history students and understood next to none of it (which wasn't a great confidence boost), so it was a pleasant surprise to find that for the most part I could follow the ancient history lecture.
I also had a class and a test at the CUEFEE which does courses in french speaking and essay writing for exchange students. The test went pretty well and I ended up being sorted in to level 3 of 4, although my french housemates looked visibly surprised by this, it obviously wasn't the speaking section that got me through! In the taster class we talked about our first impressions of Tours, most of it seemed to revolve around food and opening hours...it's nice to know it's not just me who keeps getting caught out. An Italian student told us with passionate fury about his first night here when he ordered a pizza, only to find it had emmental instead of mozzarella (''pizza est mort'').
Yesterday I met up with my french 'marraine' who volunteered to be paired with an exchange student, I messed up my buses and ended up being pretty late but she was really nice and I spoke by far the most french I've spoken so far, although it was still pretty low level (all conjugations and french expressions seem to leave my head as soon as I have to talk spontaneously!) Then in the evening I went to an Erasmus party at Bar Ailleurs and met some other foreign students from my halls. I know I should be trying to socialise with french students but it's nice having people to talk to that are in the same position as you. Also french halls are quite different to British ones in that the same people often stay on which means that they already know each other and have their own groups of friends, rather than all being new together. I feel really fortunate that I met Rhianna when I was moving in, I don't know what I would have done without her to share all the exasperating moments with, and consult on how phrase french texts!
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