Vive la France

Wow...it's been quite a week. A week of "firsts" for me...



1.) The first time "paranoid-me" didn't check the departure times 5 times in advance and almost missed the train to Paris.
2.) The first time "sleep-deprived" me got close to having her entire luggage stolen...(usually it's only been my wallet)
3.) The first time in a long time that I didn't have Internet access for a week and felt I had dropped from the digital surface of existence.
4.) The first time I spent a good 60 hours inside the university building.
5.) The first time that I failed an assignment without even standing a chance to pass or caring much about the consequences.
6.) The first time I asked whether credit cards are accepted in French...
7.) The first time I went clubbing in France.
8.) The first time I paid 3 Euros for a small coffee to go.
9.) The first time I ate nothing but junk food for an entire week (and that despite spending 3 months in the States)
10.) The first time I bought a broomstick.

Well, a weird mix but you get the idea - it felt like an awful lot of firsts considering I moved into a small French city where not much seems to happen...

After celebrating the most awesome birthday ever (true in comparison to last year it didn't take much to make it a success - but man, I loved every minute of it) I was already a bit sad to leave. It didn't help much that Uli and Lollo didn't leave my side and came to pick me up from work to celebrate my last weekend in London with me and the "Beerhouse family". With no deadlines or uni work for once I got the chance to just be for a bit and I very much enjoyed this carefree weekend around awesome people. In fact, I enjoyed this newly-gained carefree state so much that I almost forgot all about my departure on Sunday morning. After a mere hour of sleep and realizing that I had to check-in 30 minutes before departure in order to get on the Eurostar I kissed the inhabitants of Kiver Road a rushed goodbye and jumped into a cab.
I have no idea what exactly I was thinking - but a few minutes later I found myself with all my luggage - backpack, suitcase, laptop bag, traveling bag and hand bag in front of St. Pancras. I basically had the word "victim" written across my forehead...but I managed to get on the train alright - nobody tried to take advantage of my helplessness until I got to Paris. And even there I succeeded in fighting off the guy who had his eyes on a few of my many bags. To be honest - I don't even blame him, I was practically asking for trouble.

I made it all the way to Poitiers - only to find three staircases in front of me...this was around the time where I finally gave up on the idea that all of my books and my printer would make it to the apartment in one piece. But I needn't have worried - since a French guy came to my rescue...I am almost sure it was the same guy that offered me a new plastic bag after he saw me collecting my entire shopping from the floor a few days later...Poitiers is small after all and there are only so many cute French guys that made it their hobby to get me out of awkward situations I believe.

Anyways, so I was standing in front of the train station not quite knowing what to expect when this really nice lady arrived, chatting away to me in French. From what I could make out she was Monsieur Moreau's wife - so my landlady for the next 4 months and she had just bought lots of new crockery for me. She also seemed to evaluate just how sane I was judging from the amount of luggage I had been trying and failing to carry by myself...Even the two of us had problems to get everything up the small staircase and into my new home. And what a new home it was...there was practically still a price tag on the toilet seat - everything was brand new, clean, modern and BEAUTIFUL. What a pleasant surprise! The pessimist in me took the fact that I didn't get to see any pictures of the place in advance as a bad sign but I couldn't have been more wrong! The only downside - the studio came without any warm-hearted & chatty housemates...as soon as Mme Moreau closed the door it was awfully quiet.

And it has remained this way. Poitiers in general is quiet. I thought it would depress the hell out of me. But to be honest it is such an extreme contrast to huzzling&buzzling London that I am kinda loving it...for now anyways.

The historic city centre is a 10 minute walk away, the university 15 minutes...And on the way I am always running into at least 3 people. There's 60 people on my course - and with not many other place to got to, chances are you meet at least one of them in the supermarket and another one at the bakery.

What I find hilarious is to see all these people running around with baguettes...it is so clichee that I am somewhat expecting the Tourism bureau to be paying for this as a light form of entertainment dedicated to Poitiers' 3 tourists. Anyways, Poitiers is lovely&small and as French as it can get. Even though there are lots of international students and 30.000 students in total, only a minority of people speak English. Without the help offered by the university, opening a bank account and buying a new sim card would not have been a lot of fun...but especially the French people I am studying with are really making an effort to make us feel comfortable and help us to settle in quickly. One of my course mates invited us to his at the weekend and was literally driving back and forth 3 times to get everyone to his house - what a kind and awesome gesture.

Apart from all these new and mostly pleasant new impressions the first week at uni was utter hell. We were doing a business simulation. A task that was extremely time-consuming and involved an awful lot of spread sheets, tables and numbers...We really spent the entire day, starting at 9 and finishing at 9, trying to evaluate market trends, trying to develop pricing strategies, trying to understand what our competitors are getting up to...I say trying because we failed miserably. The good thing was that in my group nobody knew what was going on and for that reason we didn't have a single argument during the entire week. The bad news was - we totally failed. When I realized that there was no way around this I kind of took it in my stride. It's not as if I didn't know that I really suck at numbers beforehand. I just bloody hope that this course will move away from the finance-side of things quickly and we do more marcomms stuff soon. I don't reckon I will fail this strategic brand management course entirely either because luckily enough we were asked to evaluate the advertising strategy of the business simulation and present the results as a second form of assessment. And even though we don't have the results yet I am sure that it went well - that was basically like asking me to do a presentation about what happened in Sex in the City...there are few things I know more about. The other groups had topics like market share, pricing strategy etc. - so yeah, our topic was a godsend!

After this rather stressful week at uni we had the entire weekend to ourselves - with nothing to do but settling into Poitiers, meet up for drinks and go for a walk in the park...a weekend regime I really don't mind getting used to. Unfortunately, Poitiers is a lot more expensive than expected - une biere - six euros s'il vous-plait! Merde!!! Aw well,that means less drinking and more studying I guess...

But all in all - I don't hate the quiet! If only I could fill it with the BBC News once in a while... ; )

Bisous from France*