The campus

Home sweet home

 Long time no see!

Well yeah. I have no excuse but: I have been lazy.

Last weekend my mother, cousin and aunt visited me in Paris. I'm going to write an own chapter about it :) we saw a lot of things, we visited le château de Versailles, la Tour Eiffel, L'Arch de Triomphe, Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, Champs-Elysée.. Well the idea was that I'm their free tour guide and transalor in Paris.

 I finally took my camera with me when I was going to my lectures. It's the beginning of December, but it isn't at all cold in here. We have more than +10C every day and I'm still wearing my summer clothes. All the rest are wearing winter clothes and swearing and complaining. I heard that buses inside campus aren't working anymore when the temperature approaches 0C and people aren't coming to lectures. Well.. The expressions on people's faces are priceless when I tell them that in Finland everything works even when it's -30C.

I had my first German exam today. I just love first exams in languages! You are still excited about the language and you have the energy to study and you score high points.

 I have talked lately with more and more people in French and I'm really happy when I realize how painlessly a normal conversation comes out from my mouth. I make a lot of mistakes with tenses, order of words and especially when I should know if the word is feminine or masculine but who cares. Lately I have accepted that I can't speak French perfectly but I should try. I'm really happy when I can follow a conversation and when I can actually say something back.

In the beginning my friends and my mom were worried that I might mix up English, French and German. Well: today I was speaking mixed German and French but I knew which word was which language. It's actually getting really bad with languages. When my mom was visiting I couldn't come up with word in Finnish! I also started talking in French to my relatives.. :D Also sometimes I can't find the word in any language and I just have the picture in my mind about what I want to say. Also my English is getting worse by the day and I feel really sad for this.

 Well to the point and to the pictures. The first picture is from the building where I live called "Les Rives de l'Yvette". This building has 5 floors and 4 of them are for student apartments. I don't know how many people live in one floor but around 20-30 people per side. The building has two side which are identical - northern and southern side if I'm not mistaken. There are 4 showers and 4 toilets on each side on each floor (and for this I feel the need to swear slippers when I take a shower).

Our showers were fixed two days ago and now we have water pressure and hot water. Before that taking a shower was a slow suffering with no pressure and cold water - a lovely combination.

All the rest of the pictures are taken from the way I take when going to lectures. All chemistry lessons are kept on the other side of campus so I have to take 15-20minutes every day to walk there. I walk a bit on a road and then I take a path through a small forest. The campus area is stunningly beautiful with trees, paths, streams and flowers. I should have taken pictures when I came here but I wasn't smart enough for that. I'll have to take nice pictures in spring when everything blooms!

In this university there are 27 300 students and a big department for biology and biochemistry. Resulting from this there are many exotic plants and trees in the campus. In this picture on the right shows how we have nice tags in trees to tell us what are the names. In Paris there are 13 universities and I'm studying in Paris-Sud 11.

The place where I live is called Orsay and it's 20 minutes from Paris with a car. With a train it takes 40 minutes! (What a shame..) When I took a tain this Monday it was a fight to get in. Especially in mornings RERs are really full.

Anyway the lectures and laboratories of chemistry are in 5-6 buildings, but I haven't seen them all. Usually my lectures are in 4 buildings and they are really close to each other.

The scene is overall really beautiful with hills and valleys. Also the buildings are really pretty and old.

Oh yeah. Today I had a really nice surprise when I came home: there were papers in walls telling that we have cockroaches!! So disgusting. But I have to think positively: I was in an total panic when I read the paper because I was afraid that they were warning about bed bugs.

I finally have my ImarineR card!! Party!

I'm off to sleep, enjoy the pictures :)