J'ai besoin des Lessons Francais. . .

This morning Holly and I left the flat at 9am (which was really hard despite relatively early turn in yesterday night) and power-walked to the Sorbonne to check what our French language test results were. It seems that our test papers served only to separate us into groups of different standards of French; Holly was in one group and I am in another, mine starting at 10am and hers at 12. It was a good idea to have arrived early as my first class started approx. 6 minutes after I discovered which group I was in and which room I had to go to. Luckily somebody pointed out that the room was in the same building that the test had been in, so I found it fairly easily.

The class was good; our teacher is lovely :o) She speaks with very clear, very comprehensible French and I felt like I was back at school for the majority of the lesson! We covered what I would consider to be very, very basic French so I felt quite confident when leaving the class. Holly was in the same room almost straight after me so I gave her a quick lowdown on what she'd be doing and what the tutor was like before she scurried into her class. I headed out of the building and began what was to be a VERY long walk back to the flat.

I bypassed a large stationary stall outside a shop (was hoping to buy an academic planner there but found that I had left my purse at home; of course, sod's law meant that I didn't discover this until the diary had been scanned in at the checkout, but the girl was very kind when I told her how stupid I was. . . ), after which I walked a 30 minute walk in just over an hour to get home. It didn't take long for me to assess how little we had in the way of food and drink in the flat so after about an hour's chilling in front of the PC, I trekked up the road for about 10 minutes to the nearest supermarket, "Ed". I came home absolutely laden like a pack mule and filled the fridge and freezer before settling down to watch "Sex and the City".

Holly came home shortly after that with some shopping of her own which she managed to squeeze in with mine; we seem to be fairly well stocked for now :o) After a few hours of just relaxing an enjoying life we decided to sit down and tackle the "Dossier d'inscription" which is essentially a frustratingly complicated registration package of forms, in French, which we have to have done by tomorrow. We gave up. It is IMPOSSIBLE!! Evil thing. I think we'll just ask for help when we get there. Tell them we're hopeless cases and they are retards for expecting us to know all this stuff anyways! Pah.

By the way, we have VERY dedicated Dustbin-men:

They arrived at 9pm! They come every other day, I think, to collect various recycling bins or refuse, depending on the day. It's very eco-friendly :o) I'm impressed. But they are noisy! They came at 10:30pm the other day!

I'm going to get some sleep now; we have our French language refresher lessons from 10-12 (or 12-2pm for Holly) every Monday-Friday for the next 3 weeks!

Write again soon! xxxx