Moving Day at the Foyer: Sept 29th

furnished with twin bed, table, chair,
wardrobe and shelves. 

My new room

Saturday, Sept 29th

So today I moved into my new “home” at the Foyer.  Basically this place is a kind of like a college dorm, but it’s not affiliated with any school or program.  It’s a private business.  There are students who live here, other assistants like me, people working for school, or just working in general who don’t want to hassle with renting a full apartment.  You get your own room (pictures above) and there is a canteen where you eat during the week days and then it closes on the weekend and you can cook for yourself on the weekends.  I thought this would be a nice place to start and then maybe find a better place later.  That way I’m not rushed to find something like if I were staying with someone from the school.  I’m surprise at how not very helpful school seem to be to help you find a place.  At the very least if they don’t pay for it I would think they would know the good places to look or have an apartment or even a family who likes to have assistants that they work with.  Once again I’m pretty much on my own to fend for myself.  Hopefully I won’t stay here more than a month.  It’s ok, but defiantly not the nicest place.  I got one of the cheaper rooms in the older part of the building.  They are smaller and don’t have there own bathrooms.  You have your own little sink and then you share toilet and some showers with about 7 other people.  They do provide sheets and covers (though very scratchy ones) and change the sheets every 2 weeks which is nice.  The bigger rooms are more expensive of course and have nicer furniture and you get your own full bathroom. 

Since I arrived on a Saturday it was fend for yourself time for food so I check out the kitchen.  It’s kinda crappy. I’m gonna half to buy my own stuff to cook with and we can’t even keep things in the fridge since they clean it out every Sunday.  Until I get a pot and pan I  guess I’ll stick to microwave stuff and sandwiches. 

When I got there I was also horrified to find out there is no elevator for my building so once again I had to lug 3 suit cases up 3 flights of stairs (shown left). Thankfully the woman working the office was very nice and helped me take my heaviest bag up.  She was also very good at explaining all the stuff slowly in French since she didn’t really speak English and as usual Sophie was too busy to help me with anything. 

The main thing that made my first day so hard was the fact that their free Internet decided to not be working on the day that I moved in (just my luck).  I don’t know if it was the fact that I wasn't able to talk to Matt, but I wanted to talk to him more than anything and couldn’t.  I still didn’t have a French phone and couldn’t use Skye and didn’t know where else to find wifi.  I later found out you can get it at McDonald's and the local library, but at the time I was freaking out.  I was all alone and all I wanted to do was feel connected to the world.  I actually got so desperate that I used the 3G on my phone to try and tell Matt I had no Internet and I would talk to him as soon as I could (sorry again for that mom).  I really hope there is a way for me to just use my own phone here because now that I have a smart phone I don’t want to go back to a dumb phone.  Somehow I need to unlock my phone, but I don’t really know how to do that so I’ll be looking into it.  I tried asking the guy at the office when the Internet would be working and he was of no help at all.  He just quickly said something in French I didn’t understand and I think I heard something about being fixed Monday.  I can not wait that long.

 Finally when I had gone crazy enough in my room (view from my room shown right) I decided to go to a grocery store for something for lunch and to try to calm my nerves.  For some reason grocery stores have a calming effect on me.  Just ask Matt, when we were traveling in Ireland and I was freaking out because the drive over was terrible. We just went into a grocery store and I was instantly better.  I especially love going to grocery stores in other countries.  I find seeing all the different foods interesting.   I decided to grab a jambon beurre sandwich since I had never tried one (ham and butter) and was kind of glad I never did.  They’re pretty blah.  The premade store sandwiches are always disappointing I find, but so much cheaper than ones from stands.  So if all you need is something quick to tied you over till later, they do the trick. 

That evening I went to the kitchen just to see if anyone was around and too my luck there was a big group of people cooking.  Most of them were assistants, but a few were people who had just moved here who were working, either in general or for school.  Little did I know these would be the guys I would hang out with quite a bit in the foyer.   I remember there was JJ, Mark, Keeton, and Alexandra,  then one other person who I can’t quite recall.  I still hang out with all these guys for dinner at the foyer.  They had a friend coming over who was bringing lasagna and they had made garlic bread and salad and stuff as well.  I didn’t want to intrude on there dinner, I just felt like talking to someone.  I just brought down some cheese and bread and some meat and that was my dinner since I wasn’t too hungry.  It was nice to finally start to meet some other people in my program, though most of these people were teaching primary school and I had high school.  If there is one thing the foyer seems to be good at it’s letting you meet people. 

My first night all alone I couldn’t sleep at all.  I don’t know if it was due to the quiet since I usually sleep with a fan on, or just the fact that I felt so disconnected with everything.  I once again got so desperate for human contact I used my 3G at about 2am to message Matt on Skye.  And once again my emotions got the better of me and the tears started flowing.  I don’t think I cried hardly once when I was in France last.   I remember missing the guy I was dating at the time, but not like this.  This trip is defiantly going to more stressful than the last.  But I’m not a quitter and I plan to finish what I started.  I am still happy to be here, it’s just going to be harder than I would like being so far from home and not having all the comforts I was use to in my house.  I basically do feel like I’m back in college and it’s really hard to go back to that life style when you’ve gotten use to having a big place of your own with a nice kitchen , big bed, and you own friggin bathroom.  It’s only day 3 so I just need to give it a while.  But I can tell this is going to be one long first week.