The calm before the storm

So another week has gone by and I’m still loving life here in Montpellier. It really is one hell of a learning curve and at times the differences between the English and French culture are bizarre, unusual or just downright frustrating. Here’s a couple of things I’ve picked up so far.

- If you get stuck in the tram doors, don’t expect anyone to help – people will just push you and/or yell at you to move. Not a good experience.

- Don’t expect any administrative procedure to be easy – the French love their paperwork and they like to take their time processing things. Two and a half weeks on and I’m STILL waiting for my bank card...

- Ignore the tram timetables, they will run when they want to.

- If you want to buy fresh milk regularly, it’s probably easier to get a cow.

This last week has essentially been a holiday – with 30 degree weather, the only thing you can really do is go to the beach, right? When the Mediterranean sea is close to hand, there's no way you can resist. I also managed to sit through an entire French film and actually follow what was going on, which is pretty good going I reckon – definitely getting into la vie française!

One of the things I banged on about was going on a   lot of day trips to random places – well now I can tick one off my list, Nimes. Apart from the unexpected surprise of seeing a mini-Colosseum and momentarily thinking we’d got off the train in Rome, Nimes turned out to be quite a nice day out. Whilst wandering around the town centre, we spotted a plate of biscuits at a stand offering Tango lessons and spent 5 minutes pretending to be interested when all we really wanted was a free biscuit…which didn’t even turn out to be that nice anyway. The main attraction, Les Arenes (the mini-Colosseum), was worth the visit:

View from Les Arenes

So tomorrow the holiday officially ends and I actually have to start going to lessons and (maybe) start doing some actual work. For Erasmus students, it’s a case of turning up to the seminars and asking the tutor if you can be on their module – not quite sure how well that’s going to go, I have a feeling this coming week is going to be stressful to say the least. No doubt there’ll be some sort of mental breakdown at some point in the week…we’ll see. 

I’m trying to work my timetable so that I have Fridays off – I still need to have time for all those day trips!