I would have written last week but I’m guessing most people know what Edinburgh is like and I didn’t get up to much except relaxing, so now I’m back in Lille and although on the one hand it feels like I never left, and feels like coming home. On the other, it’s been a difficult week and I don’t really know why.
Labs have been good, I’ve had a lot of work to do and although the task seems simple enough (i.e. making enough of all of my products) it seems to be taking longer than it should. Oh well, progress is being made and that’s the main thing I’m going to be making some new things soon as well so that will be good.
Tuesday is a bank holiday, that will seem odd to most Anglophones for whom bank holidays are always on Mondays but in France a lot of people ‘faire le pont’; this means that you take the intervening day off too, so if bank holiday lands on a Thursday or Tuesday you ‘make the bridge’ to the weekend. Sounds good to me, but I won’t be doing that… I have lectures Monday afternoon and I will be in labs in the morning- it’s not like it’s a hardship really, I quite enjoy it though I am fed up of having to use the internet in the lab. It’s getting beyond a joke at the residence; they just don’t seem to care.
It’s been a fairly slow week to be honest, tiring; I guess not speaking French for a week makes a difference although I did notice how much I had improved when I came back. Not so much in speaking but in comprehension, I can now sit through a lecture and understand almost every word although not in Thermodynamics because the lecturer talks quietly and in maths-speak most of the time and the students all talk loudly over him. I can’t understand that mentality at all- if you’re at uni it’s because you want to be there, doing a subject you like (although admittedly thermodynamics does test your dedication) and thus actually want to learn about ergo, shut up and listen!
It was easier than I had expected to fly to Charles de Gaulle from Edinburgh and then take the train to Lille, Rachel and Andrew were on the same train as me so that was a nice surprise and we all headed to V2 shopping centre together. One of our friends was mugged at the weekend, the day after we got back, on campus, in broad daylight. It surprised us all I think, the campus seems fairly harmless although on a Sunday it is particularly dead. All of the French students go home at the weekend; that seems an odd concept to me since Edinburgh is so far from Essex that I only go home at holidays and even then I don’t go back for long preferring to stay in my flat in Edinburgh. I guess here it’ because people go to their closest uni; it’s totally different from the system in Britain. We’re all feeling a little spooked anyway so are going round in packs making sure no one walks about on their own, especially at night. Not that we weren’t careful before but I think it has made us more aware, and on the upside the friend in question learnt a lot of new French vocabulary.
I bought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- the book- in French because I think the other book I have (Assassin’s Apprentice- Robin Hobb; excellent series) is a bit too hard. I can read it but it takes effort where as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is very easy to read and actually enjoyable. I think I’ll work my way up from there, I keep thinking I should watch more French stuff too, I feel like I’m not learning enough, like I’m using what I know but no more…
Anyway, long weekend, well sort of, should be good. Need to make sure we buy enough food though… Andrew, Rachel and I cook together now, we each have a night which makes it easier to plan and is genuinely nice because sometimes its such an effort to cook! Anyway, lots planned for the weekend; parties, cinema, dinner out…
Until next time…
