THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

Hello my readers old and new, first off: thank you for still being here and reading this. This blog has been a wonderful place to share my experiences with you all and if you’ve been enjoying it – REJOICE! For it is not over. If you wish to follow my new blog it is https://floliketheriver.wordpress.com/. The content will be more varied and far-reaching than what there has been here but never fear, I don’t plan to abandon my delusions of wit, grandeur and superiority over French bureaucracy any time soon.

So if you want to read the first post and see what else is to come, cick over here.

Une Éducation over and out.

Finals (a post illustrated with screencaps of British TV shows I feel nostalgic about)

Or, as they are called in French “Partiels”. Because they’re only part of the course? Because they only partially count? Because? Because? I give up. Last year my exams were all smushed into a week, which was, undeniably, awful. But at least it got them over and done with and there was a kind of bitter camaraderie of being a whole class going through a week of six hour exams and not sleeping at all ever. This year my exams spread themselves out over a month and none of me and my friends had quite the same timetable. We just all knew that everyone had their own personalised schedule of hell to follow.

Now if we’re gonna get technical about this I have not spent the entirety of the last month doing final exams, oh no. Better than that; my course has a system in place where you’re supposed to be continually assessed over the whole term in order to not have all your exams at the end all at once. However somehow no one really got how this was meant to work and all my teachers decided to put the assessments for those classes into the last week of class, or worse yet, during the revision week, before the two weeks of final exams.

So for me the last month has been:

Week 1 – all the huge tests from classes where the teacher was nice enough to not encroach on the revision week but still wanted to have a test right next to the finals.

Week 2 – the supposed revision week full of tests from teachers that hate us

Week 3 – exams

Week 4 – more exams, mainly oral exams which have the added benefit of not only being hard but also deeply humiliating. There’s nothing quite like the awkward silence when your teacher asks what X word means and you have no choice but to say ‘sorry’.

I’ve had a great jolly grand old time. Especially since, for reasons known only to the administration of my University my exams were all scheduled to finish five days later than everyone else I know, regardless of what they study. By the time I wanted to celebrate the end of finals everyone else was slowing down and nursing their three day thick hangovers. Oh well, what’s done is done and when exams are done it can only mean one thing: summer. Stay tuned for some more lengthy and considered sarcastic posts now I’ll have the time to dig down deep in my soul and find what is truly odd on this side of the channel.

You can’t steer a stationary object.

But I’m not sure that’s an excuse for careering haphazardly through life like a derailed train.

For those who were still taking notes : remember when I talked about that film school I was applying to? Well, that didn’t work out so now I have to decide what I want to study next year since this year has shown me that studying Classics when you’ve finally realised that you want to be doing Film Studies does NOT WORK. I suppose it didn’t really take a genius to figure that out but what can I say, my conclusions can’t always be groundbreaking. I mean, I’m not the best at foresight – I haven’t followed a coherent academic course the whole way through since before 2011 and yet I thought I’d be able to not only complete a Khagne but keep a consistent blog about it. Let us all laugh in unison at that idea.

So what am I doing now? Applying to four different universities (again). Writing letters of motivation, confusing the hell out of admissions offices with my past course history and being almost chased out of their offices when I dare ask questions they are being paid to answer. All of this was difficult enough two years ago when it all had to go through the Postbac portal. Now it all has to go through eCandidat. What is eCandidat you ask? Hell, I respond as the despair shines through my sarcastic smile. Pure unadulterated hell. It is an online portal that’s kinda the same for every university but also is worse designed than every other system I have ever seen. Having got past the traditional “you have too many names to fill in this form” hurdle (au revoir third middle name, I loved you well but it just couldn’t work out between us and the official forms) I came across the equally classic “none of these options are correct” form.

 

Like seriously, there is no way past this page and none of the options are fitting for my situation. WHAT AM I MEANT TO DO? It’s not like I can ask someone, they just say “why are you asking me, it’s an online application”. I’m not even surprised anymore. Trying to deal with anything in France is like throwing a fish at a wall and being told that the fact that it died instead of climbing it was because it was out of water, as if none of the rest of the situation was a problem.

Oh by the way, I still don’t have health insurance. We don’t know why.

 

What the hell even is the Sorbonne?

I study at the Sorbonne. This seems like a perfectly logical statement at first glance, however I have slowly realised over this year that this means absolutely nothing. There’s an awful lot of people that can claim with relative accuracy and certainty to be studying at the Sorbonne. Everyone sincerely believes they are part of the Sorbonne and will defend their right to say so and pretend that only their faction has that right. Since I will definitely be changing uni courses next year and may or may not end up at the Sorbonne (more on that shortly) I figured now is the perfect time to try and break this down.

Already the fact it has a disambiguation page should tell you that this is a mess of epic proportions.

So the Sorbonne can either refer to one of three current Parisian universities, Paris IV – Sorbonne (my current Uni), Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle and Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne. All three of these institutions own part of the building of the Sorbonne, complete with Place de la Sorbonne where there’s a very attractive statue of Victor Hugo and at some point a bunch of people got decapitated and/or burned alive. However only third year students from Paris IV actually have lessons in that building so it’s all a little academic. No one is really feeling the weight of history and tradition in Tolbiac or Malesherbes (this is my campus, which I will be leaving at the end of this year, just as they finish building a canteen. Joy.)

That’s all well and good but there’s also a mysterious umbrella organisation called “Sorbonne Universities” that includes, among other things, the leading school of economics and the best scientific university in Paris as well as a naval college and the national museum of natural history (which, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a university to me). This organisation includes Paris IV but not Paris I or III. Paris III however clearly got upset about this and founded “Sorbonne Paris Cité” which includes Paris V, VII and XIII which don’t even have the word Sorbonne in their names. Paris I is the abandoned unloved child of the Paris University system. If we’re even allowed to call this mess a system.

The upshot of all this that if you study in Paris you can probably by some loophole or technicality call yourself a student at the Sorbonne. If you happen to be in the third year at Paris IV – Sorbonne and have classes in the medieval Sorbonne buildings you have hit the jackpot. However if you see a tourist wearing a “University of Paris – Sorbonne” hoodie you are allowed to laugh because it’s about as realistic as an Oxbridge student wearing an “Oxford University” hoodie instead of being loyal to their college.

Why is this like this? May 68. We don’t ask questions. We just accept.

I OBJECT!!!

One of the stereotypes about the French is that they’re always up in arms about something. Doesn’t really matter what, they’re unhappy and taking to the streets about it. I am here to tell you that this stereotype is absolutely true. In my time hereI have been invited to innumerable protests (this is obviously not even including the demonstration following national tragedies). People have protested about the environment, new laws, the university merger that may happen in 2018 and at one point just to raise awareness of racism. Now I’m not saying that I am for or against any of these causes, I just sometimes wonder if all of them need to be marched about. For comparison’s sake I believe I have only ever ONCE seen an English friend of mine marching about something in England in the time since I left. I was almost surprised when no one asked me to march about spelling reforms.

For example, today there are strikes and a protest – I really wish I understood precisely why, I know the general subject and from what I have heard I am on the same side as everyone protesting. It’s just that, quite honestly, learning another country’s politics is insanely difficult. This doesn’t just come from laziness, I mean how many non-US citizens really understand the entire election process in the States? And that’s despite the fact that we hear about it the whole time. An English teacher here in Paris at one point explained the US system to us and started off by saying “they have a winner takes all or first past the post system”. I, being English, was not aware there were other systems. To me winning an election quite obviously means that winner takes all. This ended in me frantically googling “how the hell does France work?” and then refining my google search to something more reasonable until I found out. A friend who I have always admired for his ability to be frank and concise once tried to outline the French political parties to me. It took nearly an hour. I’m working on becoming more informed but until I actually know properly what’s going on I generally just avoid political discussion. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the UK, in which case I would just like to once more get angry about my constituency failing to give me a vote last year. For this reason I will be physically travelling to vote on the European Union later this year.

I guess I just never grew up in a culture where the reaction to bad politics is to march about it. I feel like in England we all just hate the government but keep our upper lips stiff and hope the next one will do better. In France I heard a girl ask “couldn’t you translate this by ‘protest movement'”. The word in question was ‘strike’. It had never occurred to her that a strike is not always accompanied by a march. Where are you guys even marching to? How do you have the energy to be so actively concerned about everything?

 

 

So where did I go *this* time?

Does it count as a break from the blog when I never explicitly had a posting schedule? I mean I was always planning to try and keep to a once-a-week blog post (I like to set entirely unachievable goals for myself). Truth is that some weeks nothing interesting happens, other weeks so much stuff happens that I don’t have time to write it all down and even if I do I have no witty observations. The last month or so has been a mixture of those two kinds of weeks and I’ve been struggling to have any content for the blog. It’s certainly not that nothing happened. A lot happened. I didn’t go anywhere, and maybe that’s why I have nothing to say. I’ve just been right here in Paris living my life.

You see when I first arrived here everything was new and surprising, from the things to people ate to the way they spoke to each other – I couldn’t go a day without being pleasantly surprised. I’d still say it’s been a long time since I went a day without at least learning a new word but the learning curve has eased off a little. When an English friend of mine visited Paris and met my friends I was laughing along with them at his awkwardness and failure to greet people with the normal kiss on the cheek. This, despite having gone through the same adjustment period myself. More recently I found myself with two people that have lived in Paris since September and had been there frequently before but had never seen the Eiffel Tower sparkling. When I first arrived I had no idea it even did that, but there was a group of us that came from elsewhere so we went to see it in October last year. Suddenly I was the experienced Parisienne figuring the fastest route from Bastille to Trocadero without the aid of a metro map.

What I’m saying is that I feel like I’ve started to take root here. A few times it’s happened that someone tried to take me to a new bar or cinema and I realised I already knew the place. I can normally give accurate directions to tourists. I’ve even made it through Chatelet-Les-Halles without a moment’s hesitation several times.

I’m still applying for that film school, so if anyone is following this to wonder if I’ll ever make it through more than a year of any given course of education, keep reading. I still have no clue what I’ll be doing next year. However what I do know is that I’ll be doing it here, with all the same cultural curiosities and as many of the same people as I can. I’m sure France hasn’t quite run out of curveballs yet, but for now I feel like more often than not they seem, at the very least, understandable.

APB got nothing on this

It’s that time of year again where in France you fill in application forms to get to a different type of tertiary education. Ignoring the fact that “that time of year” appear to be “any day of any given year” for me, since I have now TWICE in my life changed course in September, let’s get to the story at hand.

I am currently (attempting) to apply to a certain highly-coveted film school in Paris. If you’re confused about my actions, don’t worry, so is literally everyone else. I say attempting because literally no one gets into this film school and even less those that don’t know how to correctly address an envelope (hello, that’s me, once again). From my perspective this school was always the aim and definitely the end goal but I took such a rambling path to get here that no one believes me. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Most of the time.

So apart from freaking out that I would actually have to talk about myself in this application form – shock! horror! they want to know my interests! – I came across the section that said “past education” and confidently went on my merry way to fill it in thinking that it couldn’t possibly go wrong now that I had been in the French system for over a year. Oh my naivety.

Damn it all to the furthest circle of hell I will never ever be able to stop having to explain what the hell an A Level is and why I only have three of them.

Top 10 things that annoy me about the French.

Taking time out of my busy schedule of destroying my academic future and avoiding paperwork I would like to engage in that Great British pastime we all know and love: French-bashing. Before any of my French friends get offended I would like to remind you all that I came to live in this country voluntarily and I love you all very much. However one cannot love anyone or anything without acknowledging and accepting their faults and believe me Frenchies you do have some.

10. Cheers!

Imagine the scene: you’re out with friends, everyone’s just got themselves a drink and you’re gonna get started for a fun night out. At this point someone will raise a glass vaguely and say “cheers” (or santé at the very least) and everyone raises their glass towards the centre and reply then start drinking. OH NO MATE. You’re in France now. Not only must you individually clink everybody else in the group but no arms are allowed to cross over each other and you HAVE to look each person in the eyes as you do it.

In all fairness this is quite easy and nice when it’s two or three people that you actually know and like but when you’re in a group of ten or accidentally at someone else’s family dinner (the French are very welcoming) it’s just awkward. I mean especially for us Brits, we don’t do eye contact at the best of times. I’ve been known to have hours of conversation with my best friend where we’re both looking at the wall opposite us instead of at each other. No one wants to be staring into the soul of that friend-of-a-friend of the girl you met once at a party when you go for a night on the town.

 

9. Yoghurt

This may be all of Europe that does this or maybe absolutely everyone in the world has always done this apart from me and I never noticed. Here in France they sell “nature” yoghurt which is just yoghurt without flavouring or sweeteners. Ok so far. But what they then do is pour sugar into the yoghurt, stir it up and eat it. So at the school canteen, pudding some days would be yoghurt with a sachet of sugar. Can somebody non-French please confirm to me that this is NOT NORMAL? I feel like I’m going insane out here, I’ve even started to quite enjoy the slightly gravelly texture this produces but every time something just feels deeply wrong and I’m troubled by it.

 

8. School Years

I have two bones to pick here. Firstly, why, oh why does the cut-off for being in a certain school year fall in January? I mean I get that it means all kids born in X year are in X year, except that people repeat and skip years the whole time so that system definitely gets messed up. In England the cut-off is in September so every child enters the final year of school at 17 and finishes school at 18. You can normally guess someone’s school year from their age, and you definitely will be right on the second try. In France you can genuinely have 16 year olds and 18 year olds in the same school year and it’s totally normal. This is clearly far more complicated.

Secondly, this:

Sort. It. Out. And know, that whenever any of you guys tells me a story that starts with “When I was in CM2” I have no idea how old you were, I’m just nodding along.

 

7. 7

This number does not need a bar across it. The only reason you guys think it does is because for some reason you all decided that the number 1 should have a tail. Also not necessary. Moving on.

 

6. AIEEEEEE

So this is a cultural thing that a lot of people know about but it’s difficult to actually get to grips with how annoying this is. When a French person is in pain they will make a high pitched noise that’s normally written as AIEEE and the more pain they are in the higher the pitch will be. Unfortunately when I, an English human, am in pain I go OWWWW and depending on how much pain I am in the pitch gets lower.

So when I am at the very top of my pain scale, ie. when I DEFINITELY do not have time to think about what sound comes out of my mouth I make a sound that is totally alien and not related to pain in their mind. Even when I just stub my toe I am more likely to go AHHHH then AIIEEEE and this often results in people either laughing, or simply not realising you injured yourself. This bothers me because it’s not something you can adapt to. The sound you make at that moment has been trained into you culturally and was probably the first sound you learnt to make – because it’s important for people to recognise injuries….

5. Bread

Ok yes, it’s a cultural heritage and it’s really good bread but when the British joke about French having bread with every meal none of us ever actually think it’s with every meal. I have seen people have a bread roll when they are eating a quiche. A quiche is half pastry, what is that bread for? If your dish is already half carbohydrates you should not need bread. I went to Italy with French people once and they were talking about how much they missed bread…. while eating pizza. It’s like they genuinely have not realised that bread is not an essential food group.

4. Water Glasses

While we’re complaining about eating habits I have a very serious question here: why do the French hate water? Without fail, every single household, canteen or restaurant I have been to in France has teeeny tiny water glasses, like this:

This is not a glass, this is a thimble. THIS is a glass of water:

You see the difference? One of them you can actually take a gulp of water from and it not be empty. So help you if you dare be thirsty during a meal. After about the third time that you ask the water to be passed, people will start looking at you weirdly as if to say “Are you unwell, do you not like the food, why are you drinking so much?”. To which the response is “I enjoy actually being hydrated sometimes.” However perhaps perpetual dehydration is why French girls are so skinny. Who knows?

3. The letter H.

The letter H in French is not pronounced. It is always a silent letter. I can understand that this therefore makes it difficult to pronounce the letter H. That’s perfectly natural. However it still confuses me because you know what the letter H is in English? Well firstly it’s not freaking silent so don’t you be looking at me all offended when I fail to understand a sentence where you’ve consistently left out a whole consonant. But secondly, it is an aspiration, it is literally the sound that breathing makes. Everyone try this: sit at your computer and breathe out through your mouth. If it made a noise, CONGRATULATIONS, you just said the letter H. If it didn’t make a noise then I can only use this as more evidence that French people are in fact aliens who have not learned how to imitate human breathing yet. This theory would actually explain several things on this list.

2. High Fives

You thought the High Five was sacrosanct? A universal sign of joy and camaraderie? ha ha NO, SUCKER. In France a high-five is followed by a fist bump. No one will ever tell you this and I don’t think they realise that it’s different in other countries. I mean, in other countries it’s just a high-five. You put your hand up high, and you hit the five fingers together. Otherwise it’d be called the “high-five-low-knuckles” and that’s not so catchy.

What sucks about this one though is that it catches you out in both countries. In France I’ll sometimes end up rejecting the second half of a high-five and offending someone’s ancestral honour. In England I will occasionally go for the fist bump and remember that I have been naturalised by the aliens then sit in a corner and consider my life choices. However this did once end me up in a very amusing position when I high-fived an English friend who also lives in Paris and we both went for the fist bump then looked at each other as we realised that 16 years of English cultural programming had failed to do it’s job on either of us.

 

1. Paper

Ok, so you’re probably looking at that thinking “that’s weird, what could possibly be wrong with paper?” And you’re right, it is weird, French paper is so freaking weird and I am so angry about it.

This is the cultural difference that no one could prepare me for because while every other country in the world is agreed that lined paper is just paper with lines on it, French lined paper looks like this:

WHY IS IT A GRID FORMAT? You know the last time I wrote on squared paper – maths lessons! Why are there so many lines? Not every day is a calligraphy course you know. What makes it worse is that French people seem to prefer writing in blue fountain pen or biro so you’re working with paper that is covered in tiny unnecessary lines, with very loopy swirly handwriting on top, which is written either in fading blue fountain pen ink or very thin biro lines. This is not reasonable, France. Not at all. Also why is your margin so large? It takes up like a third of the page, I like being able to actually use all of my paper to take notes but this margin is just getting in the way. Do you know how much of the rainforest you could save if you just got rid of a couple of centimetres of margin?

And it doesn’t stop there. Even if you ask for a piece of rough paper you will most likely find yourself against squared paper, although it will probably (thankfully) not have a margin.

BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE EITHER

oh no. The French have a special type of paper called a “Copie Double” which is used for when you’re doing a test or writing an essay. Many teachers will refuse to accept work or get very angry if your work is not on Copie Double. In itself the Copie Double is not so complicated, it’s just two pieces of paper that haven’t been cut in half so it makes a sort of booklet. I guess it’s practical but it also makes me wonder what paperclips did wrong. (although since paperclips are called “trombones” I can see where the confusion set in.)

The thing is that I’m alright with the French having their own special calligraphic booklety paper if only they would realise and accept that it is not normal. This is not just me talking. I went through the period of having to ask people what a Copie Double was only to find myself faced with a group of people that had never considered that their strange arcane practices would need explaining “a copie double is a copie that’s double” they would helpfully pronounce. I have watched every Erasmus student go through the same process of teachers getting annoyed at them for this. I suppose I could have warned them, but I don’t really know them and also if someone had told me “Hey, I see you’ve done your homework. Just be aware that certain teachers may get irritated or may even threaten to take marks off because you haven’t written in on paper that is folded down the middle” I would have thought they were a total nutter. Because that’s insane. I have seen friends confused by this paper, I have seen many nationalities confused by this paper, I have seen grown adults confused by this paper, I have seen Oxbridge graduates confused by this paper.

And at the end of the day, not even I would have ever thought that paper could hold cultural differences. It seemed like a basic fact of life. A universal constant. I guess our only revenge against the tyranny of French paper is the anglophone musical notation system. Yeah, you know ABCDEFG for scales and such? We’re the only ones who do that. Everyone else uses the Do Re Mi system. I guess the Sound of Music makes a lot more sense to them.

 

 

Another year, another blog post

I realise I vanished. I can explain. So remember how I didn’t have health insurance? That’s where we left off in November (last year, yes, I know) Well, I failed to do anything about it for two weeks due to… well, being me. I have no excuse. Paperwork intimidates me.

What happened two weeks later was a moment when I really would have liked to have health insurance. I don’t know if I mentioned this but I have Ice-Skating as part of my degree in the sport option section. (can anyone see where this is going yet?) Now I’m good at ice-skating. I’m not like amazing at it but I get around, spin between forwards and backwards, can do some tricks and steps and stuff – it normally impresses people every winter. In fact until this year I had a yearly tradition of ice-skating with a group of friends in London around christmas. ANYWAY. This particular day I fell. I was going for a jump and instead of moving in an upwards spinny direction I ended up going in a downward spinny direction very very fast and, long story short: I got concussion, and whiplash.

This would almost have been ok if it weren’t for the fact that I have had concussion four times before (most of which were caused by sports, I should never try exercice. However I still blame one of them squarely on the guy who think you should use a baseball swing to hit a piñata). Brains heal damn slowly when you abuse them repeatedly over a series of years. For this reason I have been basically out of action and out of France since the 7th December. (staying in my apartment for the couple days before I could get on a train doesn’t really count as being in France).

Fast forward to now (past a lovely christmas) and this was the first year I spent New Years in France. (I guess technically I spent new years at Disneyland Paris once but that’s not really the point is it?) This time was the first time that my midnight didn’t line up with midnight for all my oldest friends and family. Even if I had wanted to interrupt partying and watch the London fireworks at midnight this year I couldn’t, and it was pretty cool to celebrate the new year in the city I actually spend most of the year.

But to you readers I welcome you to 2016 the same way I did myself at the midnight countdown.

TROIS, DEUX, UN – HAPPY NEW YEAR

Old habits die hard.

 

The story of how I ended up with two student cards…

…and no health insurance.

In the interests of continuing business as usual in Paris, that’s exactly what this blog is currently doing. Trust me, French bureaucracy is still just as irritating during a national state of emergency.

You ready for a saga? I’m ready to write you a saga.

If you’ve been faithfully reading this blog since September (thanks for that if you actually do) you may have noticed a series of bitter and sarcastic comments about my lack of student card. Herein follows a full explanation:

Since I changed to my University course in a bit of a fuss and a panic in September it so happened that at the point where I had to hand in my dossier I did not have an address in Paris. I wasn’t living on the street or anything but since I was definitely going to have to move out of my previous accommodation due to the very fact that I was applying to uni I fond myself in a bit of a catch-22. In the heat of the moment when told that they would send my student card to the only address provided, which was in England I panicked and gave an address of a friend in Paris, thinking that at least it would get there faster and I could change my address in my dossier at a later date.

This turned out to be one of the most awful ideas I have had.

Turns out that unlike the postal service I have always known where if you write down the right house you can address the letter to Mickey Mouse and it’ll still end up in the right place, here they actually look at the name to get the letter to the right person. I suppose it means you don’t receive post for people that have moved out, but in my case this meant that the letter was never going to arrive. I was blissfully unaware.

After a while it got rather annoying not having the right card to present to people, let alone not getting student discounts on anything. I phoned the Sorbonne “there’s only one address in your file, your card is on its way to England.”. Awesome. I texted my parents, nothing had arrived. “Call us back if you still haven’t received anything by the 1st November” I remind you readers that today is the 20th of November.

Weeks passed and I decided to go to the Sorbonne to see what the deal was. I went to the normal admin office which involves crossing the courtyard, through the sides of the amphitheatre, down the hall and across a second, smaller courtyard tastefully tiled in terracotta with black keystones. Nothing. “It would have been sent to the address you provided in Paris, if you don’t live there then you just need to wait for the returns. Go see the office that does returns of post and reissues student cards.” This office, I kid you not is impossible to find. Just for starters you go back across the courtyard, down the corridor, round the back of the amphitheatre, across the other courtyard and out the main entrance. Then you cross the road, find the correct building number, walk to the next building, climb four floors of stairs, cross a balcony and follow the corridor for a while. Practical. Anyone would think they didn’t want students to be able to find them. “We don’t have anything for you. We can’t print you a second student card, you’re just being impatient waiting for the first one, besides you don’t have a certifcat de scolarité.” The certificat de scolarité would have been in the same envelope as the student card.

On the 4th November I received a call from the Sorbonne. “Hi we have received a return of post from a Paris address and it seems it’s addressed to you from your file, I assume it’s your student card. We’ll keep it here, come and collect it when you can.”

What followed was the two busiest weeks of my life with five different tests and a whole week where I lost my voice entirely and so couldn’t really go off to the Sorbonne and explain why they should let me in despite my evident lack of student card. So I waited, after all, they would keep the envelope until I could come get it.

So on Tuesday this week I realised that maybe I shouldn’t have left it so long since suddenly my conversations with the security guards had become 10x less pleasant given heightened security checks. I made my way to the office up the stairs across the balcony. They don’t have it. I played them the message I received, they say it’s not them. They track down the phone number to the Exams Office. The Exams Office, who have absolutely no business with student cards ever normally. Ok, so the exams office is where? Across the road etc etc only instead of going through the small courtyard I turn left climb two flights of stairs and follow the corridor to the end? Ok. “We don’t have it, it’s been two weeks since we called we sent it back out on Friday.”

I went back to the office across the balcony. No one was there, it was lunchtime. I sat outside the office for an hour. At this point the kind woman in returning to the office sensed my desperation and admitted that given recent events it was really not an oppurtune moment for me to not have a student card. She printed one off and let me on my way. There was still the worry that my health insurance, which had to be signed up for through the university, was still in the original envelope someone in the French postal system but I figured it would eventually make its way back to the Sorbonne. I left feeling vindicated.

The day after I received a call from the Exams Office. “Hey, we have your envelope with everything in it here.” The irony. So today I pottered off to the Exams Office and finally managed to change my address on the system so this never happened again. I opened the envelope to find a  student card and a certificat de scolarité…. and nothing else. So I have no idea what happened to my supposed health insurance. I paid for it, I filled in all the right forms. I’m lost for words here, maybe it’s lost in the post. I’ll call them on Monday and most likely spend next week discovering a new set of administrative offices trying to find it.