So I've been in Dijon nearly a week now and things still haven't really settled into any kind of routine. My mum left for Paris last Friday morning and I was really glad that I had the distraction of the university 'welcome day' to prevent me from getting too distraught about her departure. The welcome day was a bit odd. We were given two different talks about university life, which covered everything from classes to bank accounts to French slang, so they were quite useful. We were given lunch in the RU (restaurant universitaire) which was awesome - it works on a point system similar to the one at Pollock, but the food is much nicer! You buy 10 points for 2euros 80 and with that you can get yourself a 3 course meal, or a 2 course meal with wine. It's all very civilised and organised, which is not really my experience of anything else in France so far! The welcome day continued with a trip into the main town (the uni is on a big campus outside of Dijon) for the local Fete Europeen in the main square. There were stalls by all of the different EU countries with leaflets and traditional food - the UK had Marmite and Cadbury's chocolate fingers. I was with a few other British girls, and although we were keen to try out our French, everyone greeted us with 'wow! are you English?!' whenever we approached them. We asked one how he knew where we were from without us saying a word and he replied 'oh, you look very English. English people all dress like that! So... tell me about London!' I wasn't sure whether or not to be insulted! After the Fete we were given a tour of the old town by a local tourguide, but by that stage I was exhausted and headed back to halls to unpack. In the evening we had been promised 'un superboum' but the party was in fact one of the strangest events I have ever been to. All of the international students grouped themselves into little huddles of people from the same country and it was all rather awkward and strained. We were given glasses of the local drink - Kir, which is cassis (a blackcurrant liqueur) with white wine and is absolutely delicious, and then set about trying to mingle. The organisers of the event had obviously anticipated a certain level of awkwardness (i love that the word awkward is very awkward to say and type) because they had hired various entertainers to break the ice. There were two jugglers, two people in bizarre ethnic masks on stilts, a magician and a brass band. However, they only really served to make the whole thing seem extremely surreal and as everyone was going out of their way to avoid the entertainers, even more awkward. Needless to say, I legged it quite soon after the free buffet!

Dijon is extremely quiet at the weekend. All shops close between Saturday lunch and Monday morning so I spent the following morning at the supermarket making sure I had enough supplies of everything to last me through the weekend. I found the weekend quite difficult in terms of homesickness, because there was nothing to do to distract me from it. I couldn't buy a newspaper or even a coffee all weekend because everything was shut so I was reduced to sitting in my room on my own watching reruns of 'Scrubs'. Eventually I sought out some other lonely souls and we settled down to an afternoon of 'Les Freres Scott' (One Tree Hill). So that was slightly more fun!

On Monday, I spent the day trying to organise my timetable for when classes start next week. This has been a herculean task! Word got around that each faculty was holding an information meeting today to tell us how to register. This turned out to be little more than a verbal timetable with each member of staff standing up and telling us what subject they taught and when and where classes would be held. I can't think of a more difficult way of passing on this inofrmation - surely a noticeboard or a printed timetable would have been easier? It also turned out that you can't mix classes from different facutlies, so it's impossible for me to study English lit, French lit and translation. Each of these subjects is in a different faculty and has to be taken with a list of other subjects like latin and economics which seem totally beyond me! Eventually one of the English-speaking lecturers realised how conused the Erasmus students were and so offered to hold another meeting where the same information would be given to us in English and where we could ask questions more easily. I'm quite relieved to be honest although I'm not sure if it's going to make the extremely complicated system any clearer! Never thought I'd feel quite so much longing for my dear old DoS!

The rest of the week has been fairly quiet so far. A group of us went to the cinema last night and I was fairly impressed with my ability to understand what was going on without any subtitles. I have to say though, that the cinema experience wasn't really as enjoyable when you're straining for understanding throughout the film. It didn't help that the film was an 'artsy' French one, which are not really my cup of tea!

The coming week should be slightly more exciting - there's a possibility of going to Oktoberfest and classes are starting on Monday - if I can ever figure out which classes I'm actually enrolled for!

Till next time!