La troisième phase de <>

When you're preparing to study abroad, the advisors will heavily advertise a little thing called culture shock.  They'll tell you that it's absolutely impossible to avoid, and a royal pain once it surfaces.  Well, I am now happy to announce that I am in stage 3 of that process (the utter annoyance stage).  Stage 1 happens when you first get to a country, when everything is new and exciting, and you marvel at everything around you without regard for how different it is from what you're used to.  Stage 2 is recognition of differences, when you get your head out of the clouds and figure out that, wow, this is really different from how everything is at home.  Then comes stage 3, when those differences really piss you off.  I am well into that stage, and am not enjoying it in the least.  

Much of my anger revolves around administrative issues and my opinion that the French set everything up with the intention of making you fail (sometimes even if you have been raised in the same system! I was talking to a very nice French student today who offered to take me around to show me where a couple of my hard-to-find classrooms were located, and was telling her about how difficult it had been to choose classes, and she said that, even though she has always lived in France, it is still frustrating and confusing to her, which made me feel a lot better).  I get the sense, though, that this is sort of an across-the-board European thing, and not just a French thing.

Case in point: we have to get student cards, which we cannot get until we pay a fee (about 200 euros, in our case, which includes social security and fees for our student cards and culture cards, the latter of which enables us to access cultural activities at a reduced price).  Now, late last week, I was having serious money issues, because, as it turns out, my bank automatically freezes your account if you travel to one of several countries (France being one of them, as luck would have it).  So I had no way of getting cash to pay this fee, so I wrote a check.  Now, looking back on this, this was incredibly stupid on my part, because I wrote an American check, which they obviously can't accept.  Nevertheless, the girl in the ERASMUS office took my check, and didn't tell me until a few days later that they couldn't accept my check.  Simultaneously, I was waiting to get a letter from my European bank saying that I could come pick up my bank card, which would have enabled me to pay the fee with that card.  However, when I went to pick up the card yesterday, after having gotten a letter from them, I was told that I was missing something from my paperwork.  Now, this was news to me, because when I opened the account, the woman told me that I had everything, and did not bother to call me to tell me otherwise.  She told me that I needed an attestation from Sciences-Po saying that I was enrolled there, which I don't have; the only attestation I received was from Georgetown saying that I had been accepted to Sciences-Po.  She said that she would call Sciences-Po once they re-opened for the afternoon, would request a fax of my attestation, and would then transfer the appropriate amount of money to pay the fees.  Just when I thought the saga was over... oh, no, it was too good to be true.  I went back today, because I had not received a message from the bank employee (she had said she would call to confirm), and still was unable to get my card.  The woman explained that she had put in a request for a check, but that the check wouldn't be ready until Monday.  Then, I could take the check to Sciences-Po, pick up my student card, bring my student card back to the bank and get my bank card.  Does this sound ridiculous to anyone else?  They have been running me in circles, and I honestly don't appreciate it.  So hopefully that will be resolved by Tuesday at the latest so I can move on with my life!

I am really glad that I was finally able to navigate the course system and come up with a working schedule.  Of course, I still need to go to these classes and see if I feel comfortable enough to stay in them, but there's nothing I can do about that until Monday.  I am actually pretty happy with the schedule I came up with; I don't start until noon on Monday, and don't have class on Friday, leaving me with a decent chunk for traveling.  However, I was unable to find a Spanish class, which I am slightly upset about.  I saved finding a Spanish class until last, since I'm in France and should be taking primarily French classes, only to find out that you can't just take an individual class and have to take them in modules of 3 or 4 (which I obviously don't have time for!).  So I will have to be proactive about keeping up with Spanish reading and practicing, because, given that I am totally in the mindset now of always speaking French, I'm finding that I've forgotten even the most basic of Spanish.  I'm sure the reverse will happen when I go to Spain, but I don't want to completely forget everything.  So I need to find a bookstore that has books in Spanish.

This weekend, there's a lot going on.  Tonight, we're going to a crêperie and having some sort of international student party; tomorrow, a lot of the museums and monuments are free, so we're definitely taking advantage of that.  Then there's a stoplight party tomorrow night, which should be fun.  Then, on Sunday, we're going on a route du vin, so we're going to a château and having a picnic and a wine tasting, which should be really fun.  And hopefully, next weekend, I'll be going with a couple of friends to Copenhagen!  We'll see if we can find cheap plane tickets...

Luckily, you won't have to listen to my complaining for much longer, since step 4 of culture shock is acceptance!

Sending you my love,

Kristen