We took everything we needed, document-wise, and speed walked to the University building. When we arrived, we had a little wander around the building and asked the concierge where we were supposed to go. I was experiencing a mental block on the french words for: "directions" and "registration", so we spoke to him in English. He directed us into the front office, where we managed to explain, in French, what we were there for, thus, receiving a map outlining the directions to the Erasmus registration area, and a reminder that the administration wouldn't begin until 2pm (which we hadn't been told).
By the way, I apologise for this sounding long-winded but I think you should have all the details to realise what a wasted trip this was for us.
Anyways, as we left the building, I thanked the concierge for his help (in French this time) and he looked at me stunned and said "You speak French!" which made me feel guilty for not trying hard enough to make do with the few words I COULD remember. We headed for a café/restaurant opposite the Sorbonne's main doors for some lunch and a drink whilst we waited for 2pm to roll around. Now, I'm not going to outline my lunch every day, but today was something quite unique. I made my mind up to be brave and discover how good the French "Confit du Canard" is. As some of you may know already, this is basically very tender, roast duck. And it was DELICIOUS! The only thing I hadn't counted on was that the duck was served on a bed of crispy potatoes sautéed in garlic. No problem there, one might think.
See how yummy it looked.
Only drawback was, that the meal should have been advertised as "Garlic with a hint of Potato thrown on the side". I was terrified of speaking too much, or too closely, to people after that, in case I repelled them with my garlic-breath! We posed for some pictures by the fountains in front of the Sorbonne front doors:
After knocking clearly, we waited outside the door for nearly half and hour before the man we needed to speak to finally finished his meeting and allowed us to enter his office. We had the entire 20 minute talk with him in French, because, as I understood from his e-mails during the past few months, he has very limited knowledge of the English language. That put a lot of pressure on Holly and myself to try and understand everything he was saying and to respond to his questions. I found that I understaood every word of what he told us, until he asked me a specific question that I could not simply answer with "Oui", or "Non"! Sod's law at work again.
After that, we went looking for the meeting place our coordinator had given us in an e-mail last night. Unable to find a place that was clearly labelled on the wall-mounted floorplans everywhere, we resorted to asking a receptionist, who misunderstood Holly's question and, instead, informed us where we should go to enrol for certain classes! We chose to ignore her misdirections and followed our noses, only to find that the room we were looking for has been exactly above us on the next floor up. The floorplan was wrong, I tell you. WRONG!
Anyway, we met Dr G (our coordinator) and he was extremely unhelpful. He kept telling us worrying things, like "You'll have to ask each individual tutor if they will permit you to join their class. They are under no obligation to take you in." and "You'll need to double check the number of credits each module has, because each module may have different numbers and if they don't add up to 30 at the end of your term, your coordinator at Brunel can ask you to resit all the Brunel modules in September"!! OMG. He also told us that Brunel has not prepared us very well and that we should have a form, which we obviously had never heard of when he mentioned it. AND it seems we shall have to enrol in each class separately, which means a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, which we can't do until after the 21st! This means our enrolment procedure is drawn out to the extreme and nothing will be over and done with for a very long time! I was hoping to have it all out of the way, so I could concentrate on enjoying Paris :o(
However, this guy, not only has the worst news, but he is ever-so-slightly awkward in conversation. He was supposed to be giving us information we couldn't get anywhere else, but every time he finished answering one of our questions (and generally not with an answer but the infuriating comment "you'll have to check back at a later date") he would sit and stare at us both, in . . . . . . . total . . . . . . . silence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . well, we left the room feeling even more confused about everything and slightly annoyed that much of the conversation had been silent awkwardness!
I headed back to the flat after this, bypassing a supermarket to buy vast quantities of chocolate on the way, and I sat in front of the computer and watched Frasier episodes until my eyes were square. Twas consolation enough for the pooey day. Hello Milka :o)
Oh and on the way back to the flat I saw my first French geek shop. Peeked in and it's filled with comics, small ugly models of creatures that only exist in fantasy games and smelly, spotty french teenagers. Hehe.
Nitey! xxxx
No comments:
Post a Comment