I think a similar title may have already been used by someone writing a France blog, but Getting Things Done (or not, as is more commonly the case) is a massive part of living here.
The past week has been pretty quiet - we had a public holiday on Tuesday, which meant that most shops were also closed on Monday to create a four day weekend. This was annoying because in a normal week shops have extremely varied and bizarre opening hours anyway; everything is closed on a Sunday except cafes; some shops, the post office and most bakeries close on Saturday afternoons and most high street shops are closed until lunch time on a Monday. It is also hard to get things done on a Wednesday. All this meant that having a four day weekend meant a lot of planning of meals and activities so that we wouldn't starve / be bored to death over the holiday.
On Saturday two of my friends had a joint birthday party, starting with a party at their flat and moving on to Le Chat Noir, the only decent club in Dijon. As I have mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of clubs in France, but Chat Noir was actually really good fun. I'd never been there before but it was much more like clubs at home than the other ones I've been to so far. There was a really strict dress code and the bouncers wouldn't let anyone in who was drunk, wearing trainers or, to be honest, that they just didn't like the look of. The entry fee was 11 euro which was pretty steep but you got a free drink included and as drinks are about 8 euro a pop, it ended up not actually being that bad! The music was really eclectic - they played everything from French rap to the Grease soundtrack, but everyone was happy and dancing and I had a really good night. Although French clubs have really late closing times (usually around 5 or 6am) I left at around 3.30 with a few other people from the birthday party. In time-honoured tradition, the first thing we did was hunt around for food. In Scotland, of course, this would invariably involve chips, burgers or kebabs; in France we got pains au chocolat and tartes au fromage. Incidentally, I would advise against really cheesy food when drunk - it's a really bad idea! After we'd gorged ourselves on pastry we started looking about for a taxi and trying to phone one of the taxi companies to send one out to us. The only one we could get hold of on the phone insisted that they would send a taxi but couldn't specify when, or even if it would be in the next three hours. We decided to walk home! There wasn't much else we could have done in the circumstances but the walk back took nearly two hours - Chat Noir is on the edge of the town center furthest away from the direction of campus, which is about 20 minutes by bus out of town. We also got lost quite a few times, but all in all it was a good way to sober up before crashing into bed so no harm done!
Sunday was, as you would probably expect, a bit of a wasted day. We literally stayed in our pyjamas all day watching films and collapsed back into bed really early - still wearing the same pyjamas!
All in all I was glad when Wednesday came, as I always am at the end of the weekend because it means having a set structure to your days and always having something to do and somewhere to go. I had a list of things that needed doing over the next few days and was keen to get going with them as I am notoriously lazy about admin and am quite scared that I am going to leave it all to the last minute with disastrous consequences! Top of my list was transferring money into my French bank account. I had assumed that getting a bank account in France would be easy enough, and that once I had one I could use it as my main account and therefore not get charged £1.25 every time I use the atm with my RBS card. As I said last time though, it took over three weeks from opening my account to actually get a bank card and then it was the public holiday, so I went down on Wednesday morning to try to transfer the cash manually, saving myself bank charges. For anyone coming to Dijon next year, I would advise against banking with BNP, no matter how funny you may find it to start with! They don't let you put cash into your account in the branch nearest to campus, only in the one down the street, you can't do it after 12 noon or, of course, on a Wednesday. The woman at the desk explained this to me in extremely slow, clear French with lots of hand movements and pauses and repetiton so that I, the simpleton who wanted to do something so crazy as to actually give money to a bank on a Wednesday, would be sure to understand. I have to admit, I flounced off in a bit of a strop, muttering under my breath and longing to be back in Scotland where every little thing doesn't present a challenge.
I am still not speaking as much conversational French as I would like, owing mainly to the fact that as French people tend to go to the university in their home town and live with their parents while they study, there are very few native French speakers in halls and the common language tends to be English. So last night I went along to the international evening at O'Kil, a pub in town. The basic setup was that there were loads of tables, each with a sign saying which language was being spoken there, you could go to the one that was your own native tongue and help French students practice their language skills, or you could choose another language and practice your own. It's a really good idea and it worked well, making what was essentially an academic excercise into something fun and relaxed. We met quite a few French people and somehow got roped into agreeing to do a filmed interview with them for their English class. They were keen to explain the project to us in English but their language skills weren't great and they refused to speak French, so I'm entirely sure what I've agreed to, but hopefully it will be fun and a good experience...or else maybe she'll lose my number!
