Going to London Tomorrow
This is very exciting and will be excellent to get away from all the unfun stuff that we have to do at home. It’s pretty painful all this house business.
I still haven’t written about Nice and the Cote d’Azur. I will, I will make myself! Check out photos on flickr.
Oh I got a phone that really kicks ass today. It cost me 1 euro and it is the sickest phone I have ever owned. It even plays music and records video. I haggled down the price of my memory card for it. From 60 euro to 33 euro. That would never fly in the states.
YAY LONDON!
Uncategorized | Comment (0)These past two weeks. . .
A list of things I do not have:
- hot water
- a cell phone
- a checkbook
- a debit card with my name spelled correctly (Britanny Blackmon)
- the internet at my house
- the courage to have another heated debate on the phone with Gaz de France
These things have been preoccupying my life for the past two weeks. I pretty much go to bed knowing that in the morning I will have to live again the exact same horror that is French bureaucracy. It gives me nightmares.
Not having hot water really sucks. Dishes don’t get cleaned, showers are not taken, it’s gross. But you know what really sucks? The fact that GDF can only have one person at a time take a look at my account and that they tell me they will call me back to make an appointment and then two days later I still haven’t heard from them. I call back and it’s always the same response, they need to find the person that incorrectly closed my doissier. It’s official: I hate GDF.
I also hate BNP, because again in some ridiculous instant they decided that they would hold onto my debit card until one person (the same person that was on vacation from Friday to Monday) signed the paper that I gave for my bank account. Because that one person has to sign every single paper that goes into my dossier. We call it “la logique française” which tends to be synonymous with “complete bullshit”.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Finding Something Before the Cold Sets In
After grabbing TGV tickets and such at the Gare de l’Est, we finally had 45 minutes to sit back and relax. I thought I was going to die. I mean literally; I thought my heart was going to stop beating out of exhaustion. But I was here - in France - going to my final destination, and that deserves a wow. I made it in more ways than one. The rest of our little voyage ended pretty well we found a taxi once we got to the Reims Gare and were off to the hostel. The hostel was one of the most well maintained hostels I have ever seen and thank the stars above that they had wifi (pronounced weefee, which makes me giggle every time I see or hear it) and so I have been connected sparingly. We had a goal to stay up the first night until at least 9:30 pm just so our jet lag wouldn’t be as difficult to overcome. My first dinner in France was a salad with hot goat cheese – delicious something I had been craving for… ummm…5 years. It has actually been the token meal for me as a vegetarian; something that grows more questionable everyday. It’s weird before when I was a vegetarian I didn’t even glance back when I started eating meat again, but now as I am wee bit older and perhaps more committed it seems awkward because I know more about being a vegetarian and more of what it means to me.
The next day (Friday) we woke up and had breakfast at the hostel and started our apartment search, a search that would not be easy. We started off very excited, almost giddy as we frolicked around the streets of Reims. Every once and awhile the Cathedral would sneak up on us and we would just stop and stare. The Cathedral is stunning and even a week later I’m not over how beautiful it is. As we went from realtors office to realtors office, we started to get discouraged. They wanted us to have someone cosign for us that was French and we tried to convince them that we could have our American parents do it, but they were not budging. Finally we came to a place that showed us an apartment and by apartment I mean a house. Aparently a three bedroom place is just too large and we would get 1-uped to a house or something gigantically large each time. Not that the place was that drastic the house that could have fit six people (4 actual bedrooms and two questionable rooms) was only a thousand euro. The location wasn’t what we wanted and so we moved on. At the near end of the day we had seen three apartments, but nothing seemed to be just right. We thought we could find a place that afternoon and move in the next day. That is how drunk we must have been when we thought up this plan.
Saturday was pretty much the same story except our jetlag was finally setting in and so it made everything infinitely worse. We ended up buying this list thing that enabled us to directly contact property owners that were in our size range and price range. Oh the French, the French who decided it would be a great idea for property owners to decide every person that lives in their apartments instead of leaving it up to a realtor. The French that think it’s an even better idea to let people show apartments to themselves . That’s right. We were handed keys to an apartment and told to find it and then look at it to see if it worked. It was pretty funny, but these apartments are like the island of misfit toys and so they tend to be slightly shabby, unloved, and decorated in moldy-ish carpet. I’m not going to lie. They were pretty awful. And then we couldn’t find places to sit. At one point we were calling property owners whilst sitting on a pallet we did that until we found ho,ebase in some steps near the back of the Museum of Fine Art fondly dubbed We had to cut Saturday into a half day if only because we thought we were not going to be able to continue. We struggled back defeated as only one can feel defeated in France.
But eventually things did look up and we found a place. It isn’t furnished and so we had to make a trip to place called Conforama, an ikea-esque place that housed many glorious things we bought everything, paid for it and then rented a truck for the next day. They loaded the truck up and we were ready to go. What followed would be ridiculous and needs its own post.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Action Plan
Today was the last day of my International Business class. Our last assignment was to turn in an action plan for our year abroad. I felt weird doing it. I don’t like writing lists and I don’t like boxing myself in that way. The minute, I write that I have to do something, I immediately don’t want to do it. It is some form of ridiculous contrariness that seems to run amuck in my life. I mean I know it’s “my” goal, but maybe I’m not ready to write it down. Maybe, I want to internalize it a little longer, let it simmer at the right temperature, and then (on my time) let it cool by the window. Maybe, I’m just a difficult asshole.
But grades being grades, I did it. I wrote about my travel plans, my plans for school work and mentioned how I want to make sure my French is fluent/ perfect by the time I leave France. All things that I could of relayed/ known about myself without a dumb project. So why the hesitation, if it was so simple? Well, I don’t know. Ever since Coop, the thought of something as ridiculous as a class to prepare me how to culturally adapt has seems a bit trite. I don’t know. Did the assignment take me that long? No. Do I want to complain about it anyways? Yes. There is something cathartic about writing down how irritated I am with that class and the fact that a graph was displayed every time we talked about stereotypes. I think there were some good points to it and the idiots that think everything will be as easy in France as it is here, definitely needed to take it, but JEESUS a five hour class for 4 weeks!
Btw. 20 days until I leave Boston.
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