Sunday, September 6, 2015

First Week in Strasbourg

Today marks one week that I've been here in Strasbourg! Somehow it feels like it's been a really long time, but at the same time I feel like I haven't really done that much and there's still a lot to be done ... But generally time seems to pass so much slower here than in London? I feel like I had so much time in London last year yet I don't remember what I even did with my time, whereas here I've been free almost every single night so I've had the time to properly sort out the admin stuff.

Anyway on Friday we had the Erasmus welcome talk in the morning, then Viivi and I went to do our inscriptions administratives before noon. It was faster than I expected and pretty straightforward. I had to pay 215 euros for the securite sociale because I'm not an EU citizen T_T Afterwards I couldn't find everyone else anymore, so I had lunch and then went to the bank. They asked for my attestation de logement which was supposed to take 2 working days to get, so I wanted to join the rest of the students for the rally but again I couldn't remember the meeting point and the school was so big so I decided to just go back to the hall to get the attestation. It was again, unexpectedly fast because they just printed a slip of paper and stamped it and I was good to go. I guess they must be pretty experienced in dealing with this kind of bureaucratic requests. So I went back to the bank and this time since I had all the documents it was very fast. I was quite glad that I went early because by the time I came out there was a long queue already ... Had nothing to do after that, so I walked to the city centre and there was some kind of event going on with people doing cool stunts on bicycles and all. Then at night Ollie and I went to watch the light show at the cathedral again which was amazing as always I would watch it everyday if it wasn't so far from my place HAHA. We meant to check out this welcome party at a bar but there wasn't much going on (Strasbourg is like on the other end of the scale from London in terms of nightlife) so we went back pretty early. But I was so tired I fell asleep almost immediately after coming back.

Slept through Saturday morning without an alarm which was very shiok HAHA. But I'm trying to wake up early these days it's too cold to get up in the morning. Went to Rivetoile with Sena in the afternoon followed by kebab for dinner. She bought a new kettle which I quickly borrowed HAHA but finally got to drink milo T_T I really really need to fetch my kettle from London. Slept quite early again, I realise I have been sleeping so much after coming here but really it's so cold I feel like I need to hibernate. And today was worse HAHA practically slept the entire day and I'm going to sleep again soon ... Spent the evening going through the fiche pedagogique and I'm intending to attend a bunch of classes tmr so have to get up early.

Anyway to summarize within the first week I've managed to:
- Opened bank acc
- Inscription administratif
- Sent back visa form
- Applied for CAF online
- Sociale securite
- Paid rent

So I guess that's quite a good amount of admin stuff sorted. I still have to get a French number argh and I'm now contemplating between getting a plan from Three in UK for the data roaming or getting a proper plan here in France. Will probably sort that out next week.

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