Du Matin Jusqu'au Soir

So Monday 5^th September 2011 was the day of my inscription at UPMC. I was given a booklet in May outlining the routine of signing up as a student at Paris VI and this included going to the Centre de Scolarité which turned out to be a prefabricated building (and has been for the last ten years). I arrived early and there was already a queue forming. Good, they believed in queues here. I have had a lot of bad press about French bureaucracy and little did I know about what I was to experience.

Looking around me, everyone seemed to be conversing in French. I looked at a girl behind me, she didn’t look French, but I didn’t know exactly where she would be from. When it was 9.30am (signing up was supposed to start at 9) some security guards came out of the prefab and started asking if we had our carte d’étudiant yet. I hadn’t, so he gave me an envelope with some instructions as to what to do. This wasn’t part of the welcome booklet routine. Confused, the girl behind me asked where I was from. I replied, Angleterre and it turned out she was too! She was from Newcastle and had been studying maths at Nottingham. It turned out all the Erasmus students had to go to the Tour Zamansky (this wasn’t in the welcome booklet either).

Tour Zamansky (Tour Centrale)

Giving in a piece of identity at the reception desk of Tour Zamansky that we could retrieve upon our return (in my case my Warwick Uni card) we were allowed to enter with a visitor’s pass to ascend to the second floor and sign up. We all had our folders filled with paperwork that the booklet said was needed and were afraid if we’d forgotten a certain piece (which was expected since the booklet hadn’t been right in any way so far). In the Erasmus queue (yet another one) to sign up here, I met a guy who was also doing maths, who was from the Wimbledon area in London and studied in Bristol. I also met some Spanish people, some Italians and Germans. Everyone was conversing in English by now, probably not so good for me, but easier. I felt more at ease because I remember when I was getting off the escalator at métro Jussieu, I was really nervous and scared for some reason.

After signing up here, I was given yet another piece of paper and a plan of the campus where I was to go to the maison de pédagogie and get my modules confirmed. This involved sitting in a corridor waiting for someone. Nothing was happening, so I went into the main office. I knocked. No one answered, I opened it, the two secretaries didn’t seem phased that I had entered without permission; they were too busy on their computers. I stood there. Should I have waited outside? Should I stand over them to show that I exist? After a long while, one of them finally turned their body away from their computer, yet eyes still on the screen and asked what I wanted. I asked where I was to sign up for 3^rd year mathematics. They had no clue. However, this was Paris and when the French have no clue, they don’t want you to know that they have no clue so they tell you absolute rubbish to hide the fact that they have no clue, furthermore they actually had no clue that I clocked on to the fact that they had no clue. They told me to go to a certain room (I knew this was rubbish because that was for 2^nd year not 3rd). Then they told me to wait until 1 o’clock and return. It was 11 o’clock. I thanked them in confusion, leaving the office in need of more questions than when I entered and bumped into the English guy I had seen in the Erasmus queue in the tower. He had been registering modules from all levels. In fact, I later met people my age and year at university signing up for masters modules (which in turn allowed them to have guaranteed university accommodation). He said he had registered one level 3 module with a woman on the floor above, so I went in search for this woman.

I knocked. No reply. It seems the French don’t really care for knocks and just want you to enter their offices, which is what I did. I had come to the right place. I had told her that I wanted to sign up for some level 3 modules and was on the Erasmus programme. She took my sheet and said half of them weren’t until next semester and one of them wasn’t on any more. So I was to do 3 modules this semester (a massive change to the tens of modules I do at Warwick!) . She gave me a timetable and told me to choose the times of my lectures (due to the amount of students, there are repeat lectures) and my seminars which are called TDs (travaux dirigés). Each lecture is 2 hours long and each seminar is 3 hours long (I haven’t been to one yet). There were about 6 different TD groups per lecture and I was told to go away and come back after lunch with my chosen timetable. This was great, I got to choose my own timetable. I’ve managed to arrange it so I have Thursday and Friday free but I do not know about my French lessons yet. However, the timetable choosing was quite confusing, there were so many blocks and so many possibilities.

After lunch, I decided to tag along to the campus tour organised by the association of the university that helps the international students. I managed to meet more people here, including another British person who was from Scotland, studying Chemistry and originally from the University of Strathclyde. I also began to discover how much of a maze the campus is. The place is set out like a grid with ‘towers’ within it. You could have a lesson in a classroom with a number which is something like 44-45-204 which means the classroom is on the corridor connecting towers 44 and 45, on the second floor and is classroom number 4. You must enter by tower 44 however because you may not be able to access the classroom upon entering tower 45. I haven’t been to the underground mathematics library yet, but will very soon and am excited about it. The university campus is not what people may expect of a Parisian university. You may be thinking old and grand amphitheatres with mahogany corridors and odes to ’68. The Jussieu campus is in a phase of redevelopment. Its campus was made with buildings of asbestos and is now in the phase of getting rid of this by demolishing the buildings one by one and reconstructing them. So sometimes there are diversions for routes from tower to tower. The tour leaders told us to get used to it. I must say though that the Atrium is very nice with winding escalators and colour-coded floors. We were told that the higher the floor, the nicer the toilets. This is true.

These toilets were agreeable.

An artistic working environment.

When the tour had ended and snacks were being given out. People were waiting for a tour of the central and biggest tower. I had run off by this time before the maths office closed to give in my chosen timetable which was signed. I was told that according to the timetable I had chosen, I had a lecture that evening. I had to run back to the central tower, give in my Warwick card and go back to the 2^nd floor to hand the paper in. When this was done, I was on my way down and out of the tower when I saw people from the tour that I knew already going back into the tower. Not retrieving back my uni card, I followed them where we ascended to the 19^th floor to have a nice panoramic view of Paris. We also went into the office of the president of the university which was filled with awards and had a fridge filled with wine. Afterwards, I hung out with some of the Erasmus people I had met sitting on the bank of the Seine chatting. They had gone their separate ways but I had to stay on campus because I had a lecture at 6:15pm. Yes that late. One of my TDs lasts until 9:15pm as well! I bought a cahier to write my notes in and some dinner at Subway and sat in my first ever French lecture alone.

It turned out to be quite hard. Not mathematically hard, this was Intégration 1 and I hadn’t seen anything new, it was just trying to make out what the lecturer was writing down. The ‘n’s and ‘m’s looked the same which they would use as subscript for terms of sequences so they were much harder to read. They would write abbreviations like tq (tel que) instead of s.t. (such that) and Rém and Dem which would always look horrifically similar from a distance which stood for Rémarque and Demonstration. Even more confounding was their use of Prop which I didn’t know if it was for Propriété or Proposition unless I was listening to the lecturer right at the moment. I was always one board behind because copying took longer.

For my next lectures, I knew to sit near the front, but even there and with my glasses on, I couldn’t make out what they were writing. Annoyingly, they don’t have special wax on their blackboards like at Warwick so when you rub the chalk out, it’s not really rubbed out, but just spread over the board making it harder to see what the new writing over the chalk spread is. This is why just before every lecture, a small lady with a bucket and cloth toddles into the amphitheatre. It seems to be always the same lady as well, she has a bowl-cut wig on, dips her cloth which is folded so that it spreads width-ways across the board, squeezes the excess water and then places the cloth in line with an edge of the board and walks with it swiping the board clean. I also noticed how early French people arrive for their lectures. Most of them are there a good 15 minutes beforehand, they are also very quiet and hardly talk to each other. The first day of term, I expected to see a lot of them bisous-ing and hugging saying how their holidays went, but I saw none of this. At Warwick on the first day back of a term there’s always a buzz to see everyone again and a gathering of massive groups of friends. There was definitely none of this at UPMC. There were also a lot of mature students.

I started going to more lectures and TDs, this time getting the hang of their weird writing. My concentration span started getting longer and the 3 hours that TDs lasted seemed to go by very quickly. Mathematics is more spoon-fed here compared to Warwick where there is more of a ‘leave you to your own devices’ teaching approach. I’ve managed to fully organise my timetable now which means I have two 8h30 starts (which means waking up at 6:30am!), one day off and some late ends (until 8pm on two days). By the time it is my day off on a Thursday, because of working from the morning until the evening every Monday to Wednesday, I get so shattered I have actually slept the whole Thursday. I do not know how the French people do not eat during the TDs or lectures when they run through lunch/dinner hours. Between lectures or TDs there’s usually a 15 minute break, suitably timed for a cigarette break. This is not sufficient when you have lecture after lecture for stints of 8 hours a day! Plus, my oh my do they smoke. I come home with hair smelling like I’ve blow-dried my hair with some sort of cigarette smoke machine. Also, when it was blazing hot these past few days (almost 30 degrees), I would waltz in with my flowery summer dress and people would look at me like I was completely strange with their scarves tied elegantly around their neck and their neatly pressed black blazers and turtle-neck jumpers.

My next blog will be filled with social gatherings and more observations of the French!

The spectacle before every cours magistraux: the cleaning lady.

Les Cloches Sonnent

4am start and it was pitch black. No doubt my friends back in Leamington where I had been the day before were trudging back home from a night out from celebrating the first of many 21sts. I shared a night bus with London Friday nighters who, like their hair, looked defeated by the music and the alcohol so had finally decided to surrender to slumber. My mum had accompanied me to King's Cross St. Pancras where I collected my tickets, said my goodbye and was off on the Eurostar.

I couldn't believe it, I was doing it, embarking on my year abroad. All that paperwork and hard work had allowed me to do this. Check-in was stress-free indeed. It was certainly very sad to pull away from London and not see my close friends until Christmas. I also miss the randomers, you know, the ones whom you know of and they in turn know of you, but you probably won't see them anywhere else other than at uni. It was an absolute luxury going on the Eurostar compared to my coached endeavours from a couple of weeks ago.

The sun had risen when we arrived in France. After hearing an announcement whilst on board the train for purchasing métro tickets from the cafeteria coach, I jumped at the chance because I could pay in cash: sterling! When I arrived at the Gare du Nord, looking at the vast space that was the station and the bright light streaming in, I realised that I'd officially started. Reading many of the blogs from previous Warwick students who came to Paris on their Erasmus year, all their blogs started in this very place with this much luggage.

I put my heavy luggage in the cosigne luggage lockers and just carried my backpack to where I was going to live. Thank goodness I had bought métro tickets on the Eurostar: there was a massive queue for tickets. Each staircase I took made my heart drop a bit because I knew I would somehow have to get the heavy suitcase up them.

I stood outside my apartment for 11am as organised with the estate agent. I didn't look too silly because there is a bus stop directly in front of the door so I pulled off waiting for a bus until the bus arrived (the stop was only for that bus) and I didn't get on. I was getting a lot of suspicious looks, maybe because I was wearing quite warm clothes for the 28 degree weather.

It seemed my arrondissement was thriving even though it was Saturday, I later found out this was because of the market on the weekends. Every single child was on a scooter, it was like their standard transport. I almost felt sorry for a little boy who had to walk.

People started to stare more, even the tramp outside of Franprix because I had a massive backpack which screamed TOURIST and FOREIGNER. I couldn’t get my blazer off because that would mean taking off the backpack, taking off the blazer and then somehow hauling the backpack back on to my back without breaking my spine. I had worn my boots as well because it was better to wear the heaviest shoes than pack it. So I just had to stand there looking like a sore thumb. A woman with her child in a buggie was staring, a girl washing a freshly bought apple from a nearby fruit stall was staring and all the summer clad Parisians who passed me by stared. I thought I was being paranoid, but I guess I did stick out because not many tourists come to this arrondissement since it’s quite far out and there’s nothing to see except the market and restaurants.

The bells chimed on the hour and 2 minutes past the hour (for some reason), it was then 11:10. Shit. Had I been scammed? Just like a friend of a friend who was now looking for a place to stay? Just like a guy who e-mailed me through my university warning us of a scam where he had viewed the place, met his flat-mate and paid a deposit to find that the flat-mate was playing ignorant and claiming to not know him at all and would accuse him of stalking to the police if he kept contacting her. I finally saw a woman carrying a wooden fold-up chair in a black business dress and bleach blonde hair. She apologised profusely for being late – she was trying to find a place to park. The place was quite busy since it was market day. It was definitely the woman from the facebook photo (that I had stalked). She showed me in and we ascended to the final floor which was where my studio is. It looked just like it had in the pictures. We went through the inventory and she answered all of my questions. She had bought new things for the studio: a new mattress, new cooking equipment, a new shower curtain, new bed sheets, pillow and duvet. I signed the contract, paid the rest of the agency fees, the deposit and the first month’s rent and I received the keys. She asked me to make a copy of the mailbox key since the ex-tenant was still expecting some mail. I thought this was expecting a lot of me. Cutting keys? How would you say that in French? She said that she would give me 5 euros which she said would be enough. She then decided that she would come with me and do it herself but needed some change because she only had the big notes that I had given her. She decided to buy an apple, she bought four apples: one for me, one for a cleaner and her daughter. She apparently needed to pay the cleaner for cleaning one of the apartments when someone had just moved out. We returned outside my apartment and there was the woman with her buggie who was staring at me earlier. She instantly recognised me as the ‘girl-with-the-back-pack’. As soon as she started talking, I knew instantly that she was Filipino. My estate agent introduced us both and the usual Filipino questions were asked:

“You’re a Filipina?”

Yes.

“Really?”

Yep.

“Your parents are Filipino?”

Uh-huh.

“Really?”

Yeah.

“Both of them?”

Mm-hm.

Apparently I don’t look it. The two extra apples were for her and her daughter. When we had to go our separate ways, I say separate ways but I was outside my door, I finally had the studio to myself. Exhausted, I unfolded the sofa bed and put the new sheets on it then just lay there. It was so hot and I did not want to think about my heavy suitcase that I had left in the Gare du Nord.

I made my way to Gallieni to meet my dad who was arriving by coach. We struggled to get that suitcase to my place and as soon as we settled for a bit, we were off out again to get my other suitcase. I’d brought my emptied backpack this time to fill it with some of the suitcase’s contents. It took quite a few trips up and down the stairs emptying and filling but we managed to get it up the stairs. I live on top of a little supermarket so my dad and I had a little shop and then ate.

The next day was spent finding the nearest Monoprix, which was shut because it was Sunday, but we walked down the Rue de Lévis which was where the open market was and found a small household goods store which had nearly everything I needed (including a whistling kettle). My dad insisted on buying some roast chicken and I must say it is probably the best chicken I've ever had. It was chewy, not watery and had so much flavour and not dry at all!

A photo of my kitchen corner

Tired all week-end, I didn’t do much but just unpack, I was excited about Monday yet scared at the same time. My dad was leaving on Monday and I was going to be properly alone in Paris for the first time. Also, I was to start my studies at Université Pierre et Marie Curie – Paris VI.

Partance

So the last time I left you, I was still homeless. As soon as I got back to London, fatigued and a bit confused from the lack of sleep I said a quick hello to the parents and instantly went onto the computer to check the new advertisements on craigslist that I had missed that weekend.

This is basically what I did for the next week. I received quite a few replies from adverts that I had answered months ago but I'm pretty sure a few of them were scams. As usual, I answered the adverts on craigslist that I was interested in. After a few e-mails exchanged with an estate agent/landlord about a studio in the 17th arrondissement (and a bit too many questions from me), I decided to put down a deposit for the place.

I didn't just do this after a few e-mails which is what I advise you not to do. There are quite a few sites which do help you. So using this site on paris rental scams , I managed to check up on the IP address of the estate agent, looked up her estate agency and if she was part if it (yes), if the estate agency was registered (yes), facebooked the estate agent (which said that she worked at the estate agency). Her e-mail address was proved to be French and after some advice from my family, I sent the deposit on the agency fees which was 300 Euros. I had agreed to pay the rest when I arrived and had signed the contract.

This took about a week, the estate agent, being busy doing viewings of her other properties, didn't reply instantly and she would usually reply the morning or afternoon after I had sent my questions. Then I realised that I had to get insurance as all renters do in France. My estate agent said that it would be easy to get with my French bank account. However, this is why French bureaucracy fails epically. In order to get a French bank account, I need proof of a French address, but in order to get the French address, I need home and contents insurance, but to get that, I need a French bank account!

Only recently have I sorted this out, because this started a correspondence with my 'dedicated advisor' on amaguiz.com. It's actually quite easy to apply for home insurance on-line with amaguiz, everything is done on-line you don't need to send in any documents. I basically filled out the form that asked about the accommodation and myself and got a reasonable quote. With this quote comes your 'dedicated advisor' and for me, this was Adeline. When it comes to payment, you can choose to pay annually or monthly, I chose annually. They take the first month's payment by card transaction and then they set up a standing order for the next payment whether you've chosen annually or monthly. After asking if I can pay all in one go with my UK account, Adeline told me that it is an essential part of the contract to only pay from a French account (to show that you do live at that address). However, since I've already paid the first month's payment, I've got insurance cover at my Paris address for a month and there exists a provisional contract for my home insurance 30 days after I move in, in which I must enter my French account details and then sign the contract.

Phew. So I sort of found a loop-hole in getting insurance without a French bank account.

Now all I've been doing is sorting the mountains of paperwork that I need to register at my university, booked a bank appointment with Société Générale to open an account (which apparently will take about 5 minutes), packed, changed a lot of pounds sterling into euros (ordered through the Post Office) and set up a transaction account with the Post Office so I can exchange my money between my UK and French account easily and for free.

Now there are only two days until my leaving and I am at once scared and excited. Apparently there is a meeting/party for international students which is my first organised meet I guess. These last few days, I will be spending in Leamington Spa to meet friends, to say goodbye (and to collect kitchen crockery that I left there over the summer). The next time I post will be when I finally have internet in my studio apartment (in the second week). The only thing I am dreading is pulling my luggage through the métro which has such a lack of escalators ...

Escalators down from Waterloo East to Southwark Station