The more time I spend in France, the more I seem to notice the differences between here and home. On Tuesday I was saying how similar it seemed to be to England, just a slightly Frencher version, but now I've been here a week it couldn't be further from it.
On the face of it, Clermont does seem to be like a larger, prettier version of Nottingham, but once you scratch the surface, everything just seems to be wrong. The first major problems I encountered were with the roads. It's fairly obvious that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and I know this should be relatively simple to conquer, but it must just be engrained into my subconscious to look right then left. There have been several moments (ok, a lot) when I've stepped out into the road to jump straight back because a car's come zooming round the corner that I wasn't expecting. Something I didn't know before either was that just because it's a green man doesn't mean it's safe to cross. I thought that was the universal symbol of road crossing safety, but apparently it can be ignored.
As the week has progressed, I've begun to get used to the little things like that, but the one major difference that I just can't get over is the university system (or lack thereof). Back in England I'm sure I've probably complained at some point about NOW not working (our online student portal), tutors not responding, or just a lack of things happening, but now I'm never going to complain again, and if I do, I welcome people to remind me of this week.
In the UK I took the university system for granted. A lot of it was done online. We had open days, freshers week and always knew who we could go and talk to or where we could go if we had a problem. I never really appreciated the fact that we got told what modules we were doing and that our timetables magically appeared online until last week when I was running around like a headless chicken from department to department to find out what courses I can do, when they are and if I have any timetable clashes. Classes start tomorrow morning and I still have no idea what I'm doing. The only class I do know that I have is at 10am, when I have my rescheduled enrolment meeting after they were too busy with paperwork last week.
One of France's great loves (other than baguettes) seems to be paperwork. To do anything you need at least 20 copies of passports, EHICs, birth certificates and student cards (slightly problematic), and I don't think they even know what to do with them. We have to fill out so many forms for each department (there seems to be too many departments) and despite having about 3 coordinators each, there seems to be no coordination whatsoever between them. England, I'm sorry for anything negative I've ever said. I love your computer systems, I miss having everything in one place, and I want to give our year abroad coordinators a big hug.
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