What's that buzzing sound..?

Today I had my first final exam. It’s a bit of a contradiction, I know, but the truth is it was the first in a run of my Last Exams Ever. Wow. That’s pretty huge, isn’t it? It didn’t go too badly I thought. For French oral exams we have to learn a presentation off by heart and give it to a panel of teachers, one of whom is a native French speaker, followed by a debate where you get grilled on your ideas.. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what it feels like to be a politician, life must be one long oral exam where your answers are constantly scrutinized! The last question I was asked was on the subject of Brown’s gaffe yesterday (for my non-British readers, just look up ‘Brown +bigot +gaffe’ on the internet, it will be a while before people stop talking about it.) What did it have to do with my exam? Nothing actually.. the head of the panel reassured me of this before I left.. he must have been bored after hearing about nothing but France for the last two. Maybe he wanted a controversial opinion. Too bad for him, I am still an undecided voter! Undecided.. story of my life, really.

So I only have six exams left and the remainder of my dissertation to complete (to give in to the printing service by Wednesday if I am to make the deadline.) Cool. So, whilst I have the chance (I am at work doing some scanning and archiving), I’m listening to Oasis songs and updating this blog for you. Because I have some pretty huge news, and I know you all can’t wait to hear it.

My worst nightmare has come true. Our flat has been invaded. By bees.

For a couple of weeks I have noticed that nasty stinging creatures of the buzzing variety have been entering our kitchen by the slightly open window and terrorizing us (well… me, actually. Nobody else seems too bothered by them.) How strange, I thought. Why our kitchen in particular? Surely the insects hadn’t overhead me talking about them and decided to exact their revenge by preventing me from making the occasional cup of tea? However, one day as I was walking back up the steps towards the flat I noticed what appeared to be two wasps crawling up the overflow pipe in the wall between the stairs and the kitchen window. My blood froze. Over the next couple of days I checked again as I came in and out of the flat and there just seemed to be more of them. Wonderful.

So I reported it to the accommodation office and they sent someone out to have a look. I expected them to find a wasp nest, decide to smoke them all out, and therefore solve the issue in a couple of days. The following day a groundskeeper came out to have a look and surmised that there was indeed a nest in the wall cavity – the ‘wasps’ had made a hole in the mortar (can you imagine what kind of strength and criminal, genius mind it takes to burrow a hole into mortar??) and installed themselves for the long haul. Except that they weren’t wasps, they were bees. Why does this make a difference to the extermination process? Because bees are apparently dying out (hoorah!) so it is illegal to kill them (d’oh!) The council now has to come out and do an inspection before someone will be sent to ‘draw the bees out’ and transfer them all to a hive somewhere. We have no idea when this will be, but I can assure you all, dear readers, that I will be making a swift exit on the big day. France may be far enough for me to escape to. Maybe.

Until then I go to sleep at night imagining (or am I?) that I can hear a low humming coming from the walls surrounding my bedroom.

Bees.

Scarlett flames

What a nightmare week this has been. I’ve been in the library almost every night this week trying to bang out the first draft of my dissertation to hand in to my supervisor today. This has meant more than a couple of all-nighters of the worst kind (I love the all-nighters that consist of a good club and a banterous night out.)

For a whole week I have been surviving on minimal amounts of sleep (averaging four hours a night) and sporadic, meagre portions of food. In a bid to try and strike a balance I started taking vegetarian-specific vitamins and bought a big carton of smoothie which listed boysonberries amongst its main ingredients. Now, I’m pretty sure that’s a fake fruit, but I decided it was probably still worth a go. Today, as a celebration of handing in the majority of my work to be checked, thus giving me a temporary break from Dante, I sit before you updating my blog with a bottle of pear cider beside me. For tonight at least, all is well with the world.

As you might have guessed, studying all hours of the day and night has left me with very little to talk about… goodness knows if a country in Europe has imploded, the Sun suddenly ran out of gas, or the elections have already come and gone without me noticing. All I can tell you is what a state my bedroom is, and how the pile of dishes I have to wash has grown exponentially over the past few days. This is student life in all its horrible, cruddy glory. My hair is a mess, I have acquired two new spots on my face, and a friend assures me that I have lost weight. Such is the nature of an essay deadline.

Yet something vaguely interesting did happen today not long after I came back from meeting my supervisor. I put my head down and managed to fall asleep for what couldn’t have been longer than an hour, when I was awoken sharply by my housemate Aimée shouting ‘Scarlett! SCARLETT!’ from the kitchen. The sound of running, banging doors, and general chaos ensued. Then I smelt smoke.

Scarlett lives next door to me, and is one of the sweetest girls you are ever likely to meet. She is a devout Christian, an apt economist, and an excellent cook. A big fan of homemade soup (she is Chinese), she will often put a winning combination of ingredients together in a saucepan and leave the ensemble to simmer away for a couple of hours, filling the kitchen with the smell of delicious Chinese spices that cannot be found in England.

On this occasion, it wasn’t a soup she was making, but some sort of rice dish. The saucepan boiled dry whilst she was in her room, then the ingredients started to combust. When I got to the kitchen, Scarlett was covering the alarm with a towel to stop it from going off and Aimée was desperately swinging the front door back and forth in a bid to get all the smoke out – the kitchen was filled with a horrible grey smog and it hurt a little to breathe. I would love to be able to say that I saved the situation in some way… but I did not. All I did was suggest we leave the doors open to clear the smoke for however long it took, and Scarlett and I went and sat on the steps outside, laughing about the near disaster and wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off despite the sheer quantity of acrid smoke.

Why hadn’t the alarm gone off? I rang reception, explained the situation, reassured the guy at the other end that the kitchen was intact and the residents still alive, but that we wanted the fire alarm tested. What if we had been asleep?

Fast forward ten minutes and two security members arrived. I was the only one out of my room at the time so it was down to me to explain it all over again, affirming at least twice that no I was not the culprit, that yes everyone was okay, and that we were worried about the fire alarm not having sounded. Perhaps my English skills escape me when I am tired… I am fairly exhausted… but the security staff took my details and said they would return – I took this to mean they were going to get new batteries for the alarm and would come back to test it.

For my non-British readers I should perhaps clarify at this stage that Britain is often referred to as a nanny state. We aren’t trusted to look after ourselves so every precaution is taken to assure nothing that could lead to a lawsuit could occur. From health and safety assessments, to labels on bags of peanuts that state contains traces of nuts (no kidding, Sherlock) we have to endure ridiculous measures to save us from ourselves.

This is, quite frankly, the only reason I can think of to explain why the security members came back with two firemen who apparently had two engines outside.

In the meantime Scarlett hid in her room as I recited once again that NO, THERE WAS NO TOWERING INFERNO! Finally someone explained that the alarm in the kitchen was merely a heat detector (situated some distance away from the oven) which would only sound when the temperature around it reached 90 degrees.

‘So, basically, if we ever hear that alarm sound it means that we’re already screwed?’ I asked.

‘Yeah pretty much,’ grinned the security guy.

‘It’s only there to wake you up really,’ added the better-looking of the firemen.

Perfect.

In any case, I was reassured I wouldn’t be charged the standard fire brigade call-out fee that normally applies when students set fire to kitchens and told to advise Scarlett that burning the flat down was anti-social. What a load of fuss over nothing!

Scarlett, in the meantime, felt guilty about not coming out of her room so bought a box of ferrero rocher for us all to share. Aimée berated me for not having fetched her when the firemen arrived. All’s well that ends well, I guess!

Usciamo a fare colazione! ...Um, dove?

Last night I had a serious pang of nostalgia. I was in my pyjamas and flicking through a book of mine called The Usborne First Thousand Words In French. It's intended for children as it has lots of busy, colourful pictures of various locations and situations (such as at the supermarket and in the garden) with vocabulary around the borders to help you learn. I flick through it once in a while, hoping that something will stick which will prove vital in my translation exam, but I invariably end up looking for the little yellow duck that is hidden on every page.

At one point I came to a page with the layout of the town (the duck is on the bottom right, next to the little boy's leg) where there is a café with tables on a terrace area in front of it and someone is sat sipping a coffee. Thus I began dreaming of cafés abroad...

In Italy, breakfast at the local café (or bar as they’re called, because they sell alcohol too) are an integral part of the culture. People may not have breakfast al bar everyday - though some commuters do – but every once in a while you can expect to go out for a brioche (which is.. er.. a croissant) and a cappuccio. Some bars are better than others of course, and the one I tried at Milano Centrale station, with its poor offerings of stale pastries and coffee so bitter you’ll buy orange juice just to wash it down, far pales in comparison to ones that I’ve been to in small towns away from the tourists. If you choose the right bar you can find all manner of pastries, from plain ones to those filled with jam, custard, fruit, or even nutella. The coffee is the best you’ll find anywhere as well, with a latte macchiato being my favourite choice every time.

French bars/cafés are a slightly different experience. For one thing I have many happy memories of sitting outside bars in Grenoble in the morning sunshine, whereas in Italy you are more likely to have your coffee al banco or sat at a table indoors (at least in Northern Italy.) You also find that each French bar has its own character, with none of that uniformity malarkey you get in the Starbucks and Costa establishments that have invaded the UK (‘saving the world from mediocre coffee’ my foot.) The first bar I went to for breakfast on my first day in Grenoble was the Boite à Sardines with my flatmate Clém. As you might imagine from the name, the place was fairly small. It used be a market shop where dairy products were sold, and some of the old tin signs denoting the price of cheese and milk are still fixed to the walls, with various old farmingtools displayed on the shelves. It was rustic and friendly and I loved it. Shame about the coffee. A French café is essentially an espresso with extra water added to it, and the so-called café-au-lait does not exist. It’s actually called a café crème, costs around 3 euros and is not very nice.

My course mate Nadia and I decided one day in the spring term to go for breakfast once a week and try a different bar each time, taking it in turns to pick. We normally went to the same boulangerie first to buy a pastry or croissant (bars in France don’t tend to sell them but you’re allowed to bring them in to eat whilst you have your coffee) then we would set off in search of a new place to try. I miss this little ritual!

My favourite by far was called Jules Verne, which had a vast collection of travel mementoes reminiscent of Phileas Fogg. There were statues of leopards, Egyptian mummies, models of small planes, and each table had the name of a different famous author etched into it. The owner was friendly to us foreign students, which was infinitely appreciated in a country where our accents were constantly mocked. Sometimes I would go back by myself to study or write letters home.

Once we chose a café tucked away in a side street whose outside appearance was pretty inconspicuous. We ordered at the bar on the way in and sat down, nattering away and not paying much attention to our surroundings. When we finally looked around we realised to out horror that we had stepped into an extreme-leftist den. Every inch of the walls was adourned with images of Mao, newspaper clippings from May 1968, pictures of the hammer and sickle symbol… the few people in there were looking at us with brooding suspicion over the tops of their leftist newspapers and it was fairly intimidating. We finished our coffees quickly and vowed never to return. Who knows what kind of revolutionary conspiracies were hatched there!

Another cute one we found doubled as a bookshop, the tables placed in the nooks of a tiny bar area with barely the room to open a volume of Sartre. As a café it had a character and was very friendly. The staff, however, were not.

And so now I find myself lamenting the UK’s lack of non-American café culture. The closest thing we get to breakfast out (much to my Italian friends’ dismay) is a fry up in a greasy spoon. Despite being a strong advocate of British culture, I do believe continental Europe wins on this one. Sigh.

Springtime on campus

This morning I took a long walk with a friend through campus to make the most of the fact that the weather is absolutely gorgeous. We went through the woods that separate campus from the medical school (in which live, I suspect, strange mutant bunnies that have resulted from experiments – just kidding) and strayed off the beaten track. What never ceases to amaze me about campus in the spring is how little we appreciate the surroundings we have. There is so much wildlife here. Badgers, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, deer, ducks, geese… even rats… they all live around the residence that I live in and many of the animals are tame enough to sit, at a distance, munching grass as you walk past. With the exception of the rats. I’m quite happy for those to remain at a distance from me forever.

It’s not just the animals either. There are so many flowers blooming all over the grounds. Cherry blossom, daffodils, bluebells… It’s hard not to feel chirpy as you wander around taking in the scenery. There are only two issues with the arrival of sunny weather coupled with woods and fields. The first is that all desire to study floats away with the spring breeze. The second? I’ll give you a clue. It’s yellow and black and it buzzes. That’s right. Bees and wasps. I put them all into the same category you see. In fact, hornets are honorary members too. I cannot bear the thought of a bee or wasp (or hornet) landing on me or buzzing near my ear or (gulp) stinging me. I have quite an irrational reaction to what I consider to be quite a rational fear. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that in order to reduce the impact of these two negative side effects of glorious weather, two things need to be done:

1) Spring and summer need to be extended so we get used to them, that way the warm weather and sunshine are not such a novelty and work still gets done from time to time.

2) Some sort of invisible forcefield needs to be invented that can surround a human being and repels anything with a sting.

Neither are likely to happen. In fact I wouldn’t know how to go about doing the first. I would make some lame joke about global warming turning the UK into a tropical island in time but it would appear that our winters are getting colder and colder so I’m pretty sure encouraging global warming would backfire big time.

So what else can we do but make the most of it while it lasts? Enjoy the photos!

Pilgrim's progress

Today has been a Very Productive Day. My dissertation now stands at roughly 1100 words and I still have many things to say. In fact I may well have too many things to say. Well.. nothing is ever perfect straight away, is it? Anyway I'm starting to feel confident, like I may be able to pull it off without it reading like a load of rubbish. Fingers crossed for continued progress!

On the days I'm not making much progress, or just when I'm having a bad day, I look at this little dude on my bookshelf and it makes me laugh.


My mum brought him back from Greece for me. She said he was to look at when I was having a horrible day, and he really does make me laugh. Who knows why?!

On the subject of farm animals (kind of), I stayed with a family in Italy a couple of years ago. Just for the summer, but the experience was enough to last me a lifetime. I was teaching two small boys to speak English (this isn't the reference I was making to farm animals... although they could be a pair of animals at times) and every once in a while the parents would insist on a trip out... with me tagging along. One day we went on a random - exhausting - three hour walk up the mountain, passing a farm along the way. In an attempt to get the boys to speak English, we played dumb games, like eye spy and, in the case of the photo below, spot-the-odd-one-out.

Yeah, the boys weren't impressed either. Still, it's funny the kind of things you resort to in order to distract two little boys from fighting each other. I have two little brothers myself and I thought that would prepare me for the experience... but no.

Tomorrow morning I have a physical examination to get my health certificate for JET. The only appointment they had was at 8.20am, which isn't exactly ideal for a Saturday morning but I'm glad to just be getting it out the way. I'm also glad to be female so no-one will have to hold my balls as I cough. Just kidding, this isn't exactly the army. I do have to provide a urine sample though, a task I despise! They give you a tube to bring the sample in which is about an inch in diameter. Not very practical for a woman. *Shudder.*

Having said that I probably ought to go to bed so I'm bright-eyed and bushy tailed in the morning - this is a joke for those that know me and are therefore aware that I very often rise but do not shine. So before I go here is another photo for you all. This is the Université Stendhal in Grenoble at around this time last year when all the students and most of the professors went on strike. In order to cause as much disruption as possible they declared le printemps des chaises, robbing all the chairs from every available area in the University and piling them up in the entrance hall. For sixteen weeks. Woo.

Souvenirs du bled

Today I was clearing up my desktop and I found loads of random files left over from my Erasmus year in Grenoble, France, so I thought I would load some of them up for anyone who's interested in seeing them.

This is a short video I took of the flat I was living in. Hopefully the file will load up properly.. you would never have thought that I worked in IT! I often think it's only a matter of time before someone realises I know nothing about computers and sacks me. Ahem.



Anyway, I lived in this flat with two other French girls. One of them was very highly strung and ended up leaving around March / April time, but the other one was a lot easier to get along with and I had a lot of fun with her. The flat itself was affectionately referred to as le bled (if you can't laugh, you cry. This has always been a strong belief of mine.) It had one 'radiator' in the entire flat, tucked away in a corner of the corridor where it couldn't heat very much at all, and in order to light it (yep, it was gas powered) you needed to learn a neat trick of twisting the switch, making a click, waiting five seconds, and releasing at a strange angle. There was also no double glazing.

In the summer the town was warm, but in the winter the temperature sometimes plummeted to -13 degrees... hardly surprising when you consider people go to Grenoble to ski, but it came as a bit of a shock to me!

From time to time I added little touches to the flat to try and brighten it up.


In any case there was a lovely view of the mountains from the balcony.



I guess I can't complain really! Well... actually I can. The landlord kept my deposit (two months rent). Still fighting to get that back. Damn.

Reality check

So after failing miserably to get an early night (oh the joys of cohabitation!) I didn't quite have the early start that I planned. Oh well! I made it into town by about 11:30am and found the police station where I enquired as to the relevant documents to obtain a police check.

A what?

A police check.

Except nobody really knew what I meant. The rather dashing officer behind the counter (so THAT is where the hotties have been hiding!) provided me with an 0845 number to ring and I was sent on my way. I was a bit disappointed really as I wanted to get everything done on the spot, but life has taught me that this rarely happens.. at least I had a chance to wander around town, marvelling at the lovely clothes I am currently still too poor to buy.

Yep. That sounds depressing because it kind of was!

Back at home I called the number... still nobody knew what I needed. I was given an 0870 number to call. There again, nobody really knew how to help me. Argh... it was like being back in France again and hearing the inevitable je regrette, je ne peux pas vous aider (the French equivalent of computer says no *cough*). Eventually I rang the JET office to ask humbly for clarification - do I need a simple Subject Access form or a full CRB?

A Subject Access form! Hurrah! Much cheaper and much less time consuming than a full CRB and relatively simple to acquire (I am intermittently tapping the wood of the desk as I type this!) I have the documents and will be sending them tomorrow. One box ticked! Now to confront the physical on Wednesday afternoon...

This evening I wrote 64 words of my dissertation. - What? That's nothing! - I hear you cry. Well, that's probably true but it feels like I've finally got the ball rolling (down the hill, into a giant chasm where the dissertation constitutes the ninth circle of essay hell..) I actually have more words than that written in my treasured research notebook, it's just that the smatterings of ideas don't actually make up any coherent passages yet. The "official" 64 words at least have a chance of appearing in the first draft!

Tomorrow is another day. Or rather today is another day. It is nearing 1am and I'm still in the IT rooms next to the library. I think I'll go home now, having given myself a big pat on the back for reducing Wednesday's target to a mere 436 words.

And for those of you that are asking yourselves, no. I did not include the title in the current word count :P

Dante and the JET pack

Today I got the official letter from the JET office at my uni accommodation. They send a letter to both your permanent and temporary address so I got to see it today in writing. Woohoo! Well, that's what I thought until I leafed through all the documents and felt my heart sink. Yet another health check (which was a pain in the backside to get the first time around, now I need a full-on physical complete with chest x-rays!) Plus, more worringly, a police check. How on earth do I go about getting a police check?? And will I ever manage to get it in time for June? I hope so. I thought I had done the hard part, but now it would seem I am in a race against time to get many various documents together in order to keep my place.

The first time around (back in November) the document race was incredibly stressful. Signatures upon signatures, references and health notes and declarations... I even took a photo of the finished envelope before I sent it off.

Yes, I realise that's a bit sad. But the application felt like such an accomplishment in itself. The sheer weight of the package, not to mention what I paid in postage!

So I ought to get myself into gear really and start organising things. Tomorrow morning I will set an early alarm and head into town to go to the police station. Fingers crossed it won't be a complicated process!

This also means that Dante will have to wait. Oh dear. As my dissertation deadline creeps closer with each passing day I feel like I'm clinging onto my final year with my fingernails... but it's still slipping away! Wednesday will have to be an absolutely 100% dedicated dissertation day, with a goal of 500 words. Achievable? Who knows.. Possibly not if my Amazon package arrives on Wednesday morning - "The Gaijin's guide to Japan!"

Job offer!

Hello everyone! Well, I guess I should write a welcome post for this blog, although I don't honestly know how often I'll be able to update it over the coming months! So for those of you that don't know me, here is my situation...

I'm a 22 year old final year student of French and Italian. This is my fourth year and it's the all-important one. The make or break year, the soul-destroying dissertation year, the year in which I will graduate and - please, no! - be released back into the wild! In less than three weeks my exams will actually start and I will have to prove that all that I have been working for has been worth it, that I wasn't asleep in those endless French grammar lectures, that I am aware that there was more than one Napoleon in French history... zzzzzzzz

Perhaps the greater challenge will be finishing my dissertation on Dante and showing the world that I have something new to say about the Divine Comedy! No mean feat given that every time I write down an intelligent thought, I find it a few days later published in somebody else's book. But I digress...

My life always feels like a series of random adventures. Things never go to plan, my decisions are never easy and I often find myself wondering how I got to where I am. But that's how I like it, even though it's taken me a long time to realise it. Before I came to University I took a gap year in Italy, and in my third year of University I did an Erasmus placement in France. These chapters alone are full of strange stories! I will maybe tell some of them when I have little else to write about... what I will say for now though is that they gave me a taste for life abroad! I want to see the world and experience as many different cultures as possible, but how to do this when I am but a poor student?

I will just have to work my way around the world! This is the realisation I came to a long time ago whilst working as a shop assistant aged 16 in the bedlinen department of a large store. They paid me £3.10 an hour. Poor times. So after working as an au-pair (sort of) in Bergamo and volunteering at a charity just north of Milan, then studying in Grenoble and sunning myself on a few family holidays to Greece, I decided to broaden my horizons a little. I feel like I've seen enough of Europe for now (as long as Ryanair exists I'll only be a short hop away from most cities)... what I really want to do now is see something of Asia. Or to be more specific... Japan!

So back in November I applied to become an assistant language teacher on the JET programme. I didn't think I'd stand a chance of getting in as my Japanese stretches to 'a green tea please' and there were so many applicants this year because of the huge drop in graduate jobs. However, fast forward five months and an interview at the embassy in London, I now have a letter offering me a place on the programme! Sorted! So in a few months time I'll be off to Japan, learning Japanese and teaching school kids to speak English.. and this is where I'll write all about it. Stay tuned!