Its been a while since I've posted on here. I've been kinda busy. I've got updates on school and more on French culture and the differences I've encountered. Therefore, this may be a little long, sorry.
Good news first, I finally got my "carte de sejour" which is my residence permit, which means I'm officially legal in France and I can work part time with my student visa. It was a long, annoying process (like most processes here) and it was the last of all the official things I had to do!
School:
After 2 months I can finally notice a difference in my french skills. Not as much my speaking but my oral comprehension has increased huge amounts. I've learned tons of new vocab. I'm glad I didn't ask to drop my course level. I'm comfortably challenged now. My speaking is getting better too, though. Since all my new friends are from all over the world the common language among us is French so that's what we speak when we're together. Sometimes English, because of course everyone knows some English, but we only use that for complex conversations. I still wish I had more opportunity in class to speak it. Adam and I are supposed to speak it together on the weekends but we get lazy.
So my courses are month-long intensive courses. Not all students are there every month, so each month you get put in a new level, you have new, and some of the same, classmates and sometimes a new teacher too. This month the students are: 5 Chinese, 4 Korean, 1 Japanese, 1 German, 1 Irish, 1 Canadian, 1 Qatari, 1 Chilean, 1 Belarus and me, the only American. But its cool because I like learning about different cultures.
Here's a funny story for my nurse friends:
There are 2 teachers for my class that switch days during the week. One I like, the other, not so much. She's very old school, very French, very serious, and not always very nice. We were learning about medical terminology, which I happen to be familiar with since I worked in clinics in Madagascar (they speak french there). Also since medical words are Latin based, they're similar in all Latin based languages. The word was "asculte." My nurse friends will know that "ascultate" in English means to listen, you ascultate lung sounds. She asked if anyone knew what it meant and I replied "ecouter" which means to listen. She said "no, it means regarder" (to look). There is a dentist in the class too and we both replied "non, c'est ecouter" she said "no it means to look, you asculte someones eyes, or throat" after a few minutes of us saying no and her completely refusing to believe us we gave up. A few minutes later she asked what are the different ways to take a temperature. She said, armpit, forhead, ear. I said "under the tongue" she said "really? I've never heard of that before" I said "well that's how I always take my patients' temperatures" she says "what are you a doctor?" I said "no I'm a nurse" and she says "oh you're a nurse?! well then maybe you are right about asculte meaning to listen, I mean I'm no medical professional you probably know more than me" She completely recanted all she said about "asculte" and then referred to me for answers for the rest of the class.
Living in France
Apartment hunting
So before I even got here Adam and I decided to put in our 3 (yes 3) month notice to move out of his apartment. Its only 300 sq feet and the internet and phone service have absolutely horrible reception. Once the notice is given you can't change your mind, you have to be out in 3 months. We're looking on LeBonCoin, its similar to CraigsList but not nearly as good, not nearly as many options. We've been warned that landlords never give you back your security deposit, so to deal with this, the French just don't pay their last month's rent.
A major difference and difficulty we've run into is finding an equipped kitchen. In France, when you move, you take EVERYTHING with you. This includes the stove/oven, refrigerator, microwave. Some apartments we see online only have a kitchen sink. Luckily, the newly renovated apartments have the oven/stove built into the cabinetry/walls. So that's what we need to look for.
Another random thing about apartments in general, since the French are very into energy conservation and since energy use is cheaper at night, water heaters are only turned on at night, at 11pm. If you run out of hot water at noon you don't get hot water again until the next morning. Our water tank in this studio is only built for 1 person use and there's now 2 people in this apartment. On occasion, if we both take morning showers, I'll run out of hot water while doing the dishes later in the day. I take shorter showers and keep the water pressure low to avoid running out.
Doing Laundry:
The laundromat we use has 10 washing machines and 5 dryers. For some unknown reason only about 5 of them are turned on on any given day. So I have to go down the line to see which ones are turned on that I can use. Also, French people, and I think non-Americans in general, don't really use dryers for their clothes. Clothes lines strung outside of windows are very common. I've seen it in Italy too. Most people I see in the laundromat take all their clothes straight from the washing machine and leave. Our Brazilian friend had a special drying rack installed in her laundry room, she doesn't own a dryer. Neither do our French friends. Its also very expensive to use the dryers at the laundromat. 1 euro for each 10 mins. So Adam and I just do 10 minutes in the dryer and then bring it home and put it on our drying rack to dry the rest of the way.
Public Restrooms:
Most of the public restrooms I've used in France are teeny tiny. Sometimes they're kind of gross but not always. But what I've noticed the most is that there are rarely toilet seats on the toilets. You can tell there used to be one at some point. I asked 2 non French people why this is and they both told me they heard they get stolen. Why in the world someone would steal a toilet seat is ridiculous to me, I'll have to ask a French person.
Flying:
So in the past year I've been on a few planes that are mostly full of French people. Something funny I noticed, they clap when the plane lands. My guess is they're applauding the pilot for not crashing. Not everyone does it, of course, but I was pretty confused the first time I heard it.
Also, when a plane is delayed, they tell you why! Our first flight to Venice was delayed because the pilot was sick so a new pilot was en route to the airport. My flight back from Venice was delayed because there was an issue with a passenger on the earlier flight from Rome so it was late getting in from Rome. Its kinda nice. In the US you only know delay reasons if they have to do with weather.
