Just sick, homesick and sick of the Bordeaux 3

I still don't have the Internet because of the very efficient French system. Now I'm at the university using the net. This is like a time capsule. A message from me from Sunday:

"Hi guys!

I don't know when this post is coming out since I don't have the Internet connection. It's Sunday, the 3rd day without WiFi. I feel like a caveman.

Damn, this post sounds like a call for help. Like I'm on an island after a plane crash. In fact, that's how I feel right now. I've been really sick the whole week, yesterday I didn't have the energy of going outside. Neither than I'm having today.

So let me tell you about this week.

School started on Wednesday. I was sick, had fever the former night, but I couldn't miss my first day at the university. Literally, I couldn't. They gave us all the information on the first day. I would have wanted to skip it, since I had to wake up AT 6 IN THE MORNING! So I'd slept like 4 hours.

Looking forward to the first day at school!

Welcome to the slum!

We looked like tourists. Probably that's why no-one came to talk to us!!

School was great. Or that's what I would have said if I wouldn't have slept through the whole thing. I'm serious, I just fell asleep! There was an auditorium full of excited exchange students - and then there was me: the only person wearing a ridiculous hat (actually the only person wearing any kind of hat) and sleeping through the speeches. Yes, I'm an A student. And yes, the year's gonna go so well!

The last thing I saw before I fell asleep. Some info about everything. Didn't help me with anything. The first booklet started with "birth control and safer sex", what's up with that? I got a free condom! :D

 After the very relaxing nap time -A.K.A. school- we got food. Which was free! And gourmet! The best thing on that day.

Loved the chicken sticks, but they ran out of them!! Why!?

After food we got... more food! There were cheese and desserts!

We went to our apartment to see what the residence was lacking and headed for Ikea after that. I was so tired that I thought I would die. Of course turned out than I can get much more tired.

See the lovely eye bags! 

I updated something on Thursday as you might remember. I don't. So let's go to Friday.

I woke up at 5 at night because I felt like someone tried to cut my throat off from the inside. I felt really sick but I just drank tea and started carrying my stuff out since it was the moving day. We dragged our affairs to our new, own, apartment and said "bye" to Heidi's folks who got to go back to Finland. By car. Gotta be exhausting. Anyway, I'm really thankful because they'd helped me a lot by letting me live with them, washing my laundry, cooking for me, driving us around and helping with the flat hunting.

After the goodbyes we went to the university Bordeaux 3 to choose our courses. Now let me tell you a story about the most idiotic system in the world:

We went to the IT class and eventually got a guy to assist us. He was like our tutor or something but his English skills were just useless. Luckily I speak French. I just felt really bad for the people who didn't, since the guy didn't know English AT ALL. AND HE'S IN UNIVERSITY, GODDAMMIT! 

The only thing that was worse than his English language were his computer skills. Seriously!? I mean, it's a cliché  that the human scientists are bad at computers. No-one can really be that bad. Almost everything he knew was how to go to the Bordeaux 3 website. And even that turned out to be a problem.

After a very useless and trivially long "guiding" we got to choose our courses. Except that we didn't. The computer program showed the timetable of only one course at the time. It was supposed to show all the alternative groups of which we could choose one but it was impossible to see which lessons belonged to a certain group. Really useful.

The course planning was really difficult because it required remembering the timetables of all the courses. It didn't show them at the same time. Why!? Just: why!? What possible use is there for such a program?!?!?!

After growling out of frustration and commenting the system loudly in Finnish - many of the other exchange students were laughing at me - I encountered another problem. There was no button for choosing the course. So I asked the English-hating-human-science-never-used-a-computer guy if he knew how to sign up for the courses. He didn't listen to me and tried to start showing (again!!!!) the same thing he'd showed before. I was nearly exploding.

I told him I wanted to sign up for the course. Then he told me the most unbelievable thing: I couldn't sign up online!!!! What the actual fuck?! Was he trying to say that there was a computer program that showed only one course at a time, didn't show that properly (I forgot to tell that the course was found by copy-pasting its code. Of course, most courses weren't found at all.) and with which I couldn't even sign in!? No!! It couldn't be true!!! Someone tell me the guy's nuts!!

So I asked him (surprisingly calmly) how can I sign up. He told me to draw a timetable on a paper and try to match the courses on it. Welcome to the 19th century! Or the Middle Ages! I was desperately trying not to tell him how incredibly inefficient I found the system. And how I would have wanted to murder someone in a very brutal way. Possibly the guy himself who probably had never heard the word "practical".

So Heidi and I tried to find the courses and use the life-sucking system of Bordeaux 3. Then, suddenly, one of the tutors said that there would be a lunch time after 5 minutes and the classroom was going to be closed for an hour. So we left, having completed absolutely nothing.

We went to one of the Subways in Bordeaux center. Cheapest sub was only 2.90!! And there was free Wifi!

We bought some notebooks for school and I bought one for poetry. Yes, I write poems. No, I'm not kidding.

We most certainly did not want to go back to the university and face the awful system, so we went to our apartment. There was going to be l'état des lieux  - some kind of checking how everything looks before we move in and break everything - at 18.00. Of course, I accidentally fell asleep again and woke up like a quarter before the landlady came in. I probably looked like a zombie - and definitely felt like one, too.

After all the formal shit like writing checks (yeah, I have a checkbook, welcome to the 20th century!!), we finally got to be in peace in our HUGE, very dirty apartment. I would have wanted to have a party (like apparently the people living above us are having EVERY NIGHT!!) but I felt like dying so I just drank 1000000 cups of tea and wrote poems.

Our salon! Or part of it!

Our big-ass fancy table.

Our fancy tea table (lol)!

Watching our dining room from our living room.

A gallon of tea, throat pastilles, painkillers and poetry. Yeah, I was sick.

So Saturday was fun. I woke up only to realize that my throat was as sore as it had been. Besides that, I was coughing my lungs out. And my head was full of slime. On top of that, both my eyes were red, probably infection.

As I looked horrible, I didn't bother to put on any make up or brush my hair. We got to use our new washing machine so I put all my bras in it. So no bra.

We started cleaning up the apartment. If you think 100 m² is a small apartment, I dare you to clean it up! And - a nice surprise - our cleaning equipment came straight from the Middle Ages. Our vacuum cleaner was as efficient as the Bordeaux 3 system of applying to courses, so we used a broom!!  A very old one.

The joy of cleaning with high-tech equipment!

There I was, cleaning, sick as hell, when the door phone thing rang. It was our landlady, asking if she could come in. I looked at myself, wearing flip flops, a hoodie, some kind or pants, no bra, hair like a mess, red eyes, huge eye bags, no makeup and you know - looking like shit - and said: "Well, of course."

So she came in and asked if a guy could come visit the apartment right now. I didn't bother looking the whole shit again, just answered "yes".

The guy was nice. He was French and a guy. Did I mention that he was a guy? Well, he is! He asked if it would bother us that he would live with us. (I asked inside my head if it bothered him to live with a zombie like me.) We said no. He signed the papers and is now officially our roommate. He moves in next Sunday, hopefully I'll look less dead by that time...

So after signing the papers, the guy asked if his friends could come in and see the place.  I had nothing to lose, so I said yes. "Yes, come look at the monster, everybody! Please! Invite the whole Bordeaux!" His friends were nice.

So that night I cleaned up the house, drank too much tea and wrote poems. Again.

Today was pretty much the same as the last night except that I think my ear has an infection too.  I've been feeling really sad for some reason. I miss everybody. I've surrendered. This is where I live now. I hope it will become my home at some point. I'm so sick that the thing I find myself doing over and over again is stare at nothing and think about nothing. Maybe it's because I don't have the Internet. Apparently I don't have a brain either. Ask Heidi, I've probably said like 10 words a day. Hard to believe? It's the truth! Yeah, I really am sick.       

I know I complained a lot in this one. I'm sorry for that. Maybe I'll grow up here in France (let's all hope for that :D).

Please come visit me soon! I will get better so don't worry about the deadly virus that's attacked me!

See you when I get the Internet!

-Whatever you call me"

So, I'm still sick but I managed to sign myself in on the courses. I chose only Chinese and French courses :D .  I know, that won't get me anywhere. Please comment!