In my previous post I mentioned I would talk politics soon, but as that topic is still festering away in my mind I plan on saving that for a different time.
Instead, let me present to you some of the major challenges I have found myself encountering thus far. On the whole, the year abroad is great, absolutely. But, "C'est une expérience," I hear myself repeating to people here as I recount my woes. Are you sitting comfortably..? You won't be shortly.
Coming as I do from a medium-sized city, studying in a small one and visiting frequently the capital of the United Kingdom, Bolbec has undoubtedly been a challenge. Its population is 17,000, far shy of Exeter's 120,000, the littlest of those places to which I am accustomed. As such, its public transport is something to be desired, as I may have mentioned once or twice. I'm never going to complain that Exeter is poorly connected to the rest of the country again. Because of its history as a somewhat industrial town, its workers were prevented from leaving by placing the nearest useful - and fairly quick, with hourly just-under-two-hour trains to Paris - train station five kilometres away. Add to this the fact that buses around town and to said station are not only irregular but frankly almost non-existent during the afternoon, and you can understand the bizarre situation of my trawling through numerous flights out of Paris to find ones that would correspond with my town's bus system.
I have, so far, been relying on my own two feet to get to town and to work when it's a choice between that and the buses. It's not a great walk to my second school, and forty minutes with my brick of a laptop (there is no projector in my classroom) at 8am is not the best way to start the morning. At least I'm getting some form of exercise. I'm just thankful that the bus back again has always been present when I've needed it so that I can avoid the hill, even if it is an hour and a half after I finish work. Not to worry though, after Christmas I am trusting myself to drive on the other side of the road when I bring my car here on the fabulous overnight Portsmouth-Le Havre ferry...
Moving on, after six weeks of being in this flat and three weeks since the maintenance company was told for a second time about the problem, I finally have hot water. I waited three months for a part, and when the man installed it, the boiler still didn't work, and he had to take almost the entire thing apart. Finally it resulted in the first hot shower I have ever had living on my own in France. Even after becoming somewhat used to cold showers, the hot water was a vast improvement on the necessary mad dash to hug a radiator post-hair washing.
Next, I take you to the concept of a mobile phone. As I informed you five weeks ago, I broke my iPhone. Whilst the insurance claim has finally been submitted, I have also finally received my old phone from my parents. After paying to unblock it from T-Mobile, it now accepts all my British SIM cards, but in a different way refuses to allow my French one to work. After ten days and two e-mails to SFR (my French provider) I anticipate the arrival of a new SIM card, free of charge and as a one-off they pained to remind me a couple of times. Great, thanks, considering it's not my fault your SIMs don't work... They've also fabricated some out-of-contract call charges I'm supposed to have racked up whilst I was unable to use said phone. Stay tuned.
If that wasn't enough, enjoy some stories about banking problems. In France you can't have your debit card until you put money in the account (so I paid about £12 to transfer some - thanks NatWest) and apparently last year's assistant here paid for everything by cheque so I was a bit of a pioneer here. Although part of me wishes I hadn't bothered. Everyone who has ever shopped online is aware of the MasterCard SecureCode system, or Verified by Visa but you have not experienced it until you have experienced in France. It does not require you to set up a password and ask you for letters from it, oh no. It telephones or texts you every time you shop online. Imagine my horror when at ten o'clock at night I realised my account is still linked to my supervising teacher's landline and I had just tried to buy train tickets. Needless to say that purchase didn't happen, but neither did another the next day on the same site. Twice. Neither time was I allowed to even get as far as a SecureCode. The bank said to me, "oh they don't work on all sites". Well how helpful and inaccurate. If you can't make a payment work on France's main railway site, then heaven help us all. Since then, payments have been refused and I have been told to try in twenty-four hours when it still hasn't worked. I have an entire month's wages in that account. At least it works in shops, you'd think. No. It doesn't. Jokingly I said to my fellow assistants in the supermarket, "Oh how funny would it be if my card gets refused now?" I need say no more. Cash machines work though, for the time being. Bien sûr, c'est une expérience.
Je rigole parce que si je rigolais pas, je pleurerais. (I laugh because if I didn't laugh, I would cry.)
Moral of the story, dear readers. Don't mess with me in English, because if I can deal with any of this in French, I'm sure coming at you in my native tongue. And at any rate, put it this way: at least I have now discovered the French for "the Dark Ages"...
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