To School

My residence hall is located in a village called Cergy Le Haut. I have a room on the 4th floor in a part of the building that from the outside resembles a slightly futuristic sardine can. I haven’t wandered around much, but we have a little shop in the lobby, a workout room, a tennis court, a games room and two laundry rooms.

I have a little studio that has a main room with bed, a big desk, a big window, some shelves, a little dining table, a closet and a tv (I was shocked by this because I don’t recall seeing any standard-issue tv’s when I visited colleges). I have a little kitchen – Lori, think 97th Street revisited – and a nice bathroom. Phew. I know you are all relieved about the bathroom since just about everyone knew that was my one hang-up about dorm-life.

From my room, I have a view of the train and town, which is mostly made up of similar looking cream apartment buildings. Apparently, the train is very quiet. I know it runs because trains come and go, but I haven’t heard it once. Somewhere there is a clock that I hear chime on the hour, but I haven’t seen a church or a chiming clock in town yet. Cergy Le Haut is small, but it has all of the necessary things. It has about 5 hairdressers and 7 banks (these two places seem to be the most prevalent in any town here), a bakery for all of the baguettes, a movie theater, a grocery store, a flower & gift store and a place called the “Garage du Pain” or “Bread Garage.” I’m guessing it’s similar to the Gourmet Garage. Let’s hope.

I spent most of Saturday unpacking and made one trip to Franprix, my new grocery store. Franprix is very Franfun. There are lots of new things to eat. Everything is in nice little packages with pictures of cute little food items or cartoon animals. Shopping is so cheery. I did want to buy the happy porcupine kitchen sponges, but they were too expensive. I did settle on the Okay! paper towels with a picture of an elephant.

I didn’t set my alarm for Sunday morning and ended up sleeping until 4 in the afternoon (so much for getting over jetlag quickly). By the time I should have been going to bed, I had only been up 7 hours. Needless to say, that didn’t work out very well.

This morning, I went to Cergy-Préfecture to sign my room insurance form and visit school. The building where my program is was just renovated and is very nice. I met the two administrators from my program and they could not have been more welcoming. One treated me to coffee and gave me a tour of campus. After a couple of days wandering about on my own, it was a relief to see my new home-base.

Next was the conquering of Auchan, a store which is a step up from a Wal-mart, but not quite a SuperTarget. I got beaucoup de necessary items for my room and took them home. Next I braved the town Tabac for a phone card and then proceeded to spend 15 minutes in the phone booth trying to figure out how to call home. Of course, I have a phone in my room, but I have no idea how to use it for external calls. Actually, I don’t even know my number.