Paris, I'm going to miss you

 Oh my I just realized that I've lived in Paris for 10 months and I don't have a picture with the Eiffel-tower! It's something to add to my never ending "to do"-list :)

Last time I told you how I miss Finland. Well, this post is dedicaded to all the things I'm going to miss from France!

First of all I'm going to miss the language. Especially in the beginning I got better and better every day and I really liked that. Now when I start a new conversation with somone they don't even start talking in English like in the beginning. I guess that my French is understandable :) of course I don't have as much vocabularly as I would like to have but I just have to sturdy, study some more and use the language. For some reason I loved to have the lessons in French but if I could chose I'd have the exams in Finnish...

I'm going to miss my job! I've been a babysitter in a French family and it has been such a joy to see the children grow and see how the younger one learns new things all the time. I'm happy that I'm going to see them a couple of times before I leave France and I hope that they'd visit my family in Finland some day like my family and friend have visited them. I'm really grateful for them for doing stuff with me outside of babysitting. The picture of me playing piano is from their place.

I'm going to miss French food. All this pasta, snails, sea food, pain du chocola (that I hated in the beginning and now I love it), French onion soup, baguette and all these delicious desserts. I'm really French now since every time I eat I HAVE to get a dessert :) and oh my God all the cheese and creps that I'm going to miss in Finland. And macarons! All and all the bakery here is so different from the Finnish one that I can't tell in detail all the things that I'm going to miss.

Here I love the fact that I live near Paris but not exactly in the center. Orsay is really safe and I can hop in a train whenever I want and be in Paris in 30min. In Finland I live in the north and the closest big city is like 6 hours away. I can't describe the joy that I feel when living here because I can find everything I need from Paris.

Of course I'm going to miss all the friends I've made here but I miss my Finnish friends too! And now all my Erasmus friends have left for their homes so they aren't exactly here in Paris. But I really with to see them at some point :) I've made plans to go to Germany and Mardrid, I just have to see when I have money and time to do that. I hope that as many of them as possible will visit me in Finland.

I'm going to miss the train and metro system. In Finland we have metros and trams only in Helsinki, not where I live. Of course they have had many strikes here and the trains are late a lot but still. In Oulun we have only busses which go once in 30min or an hour. I've became so impatient here! All my friends laught at me when I go "Shoot!! We have to wait 2 minutes??" because in my hometown we go "Oh nice only 15 minutes to wait". I love living in a bigger city.

I'm also going to miss all the stuff we can do here. In Paris you can just take a metro and go to a new location and there is something to see. In Oulu you call your friends and you are like "yeah... well.. I don't know.. How about a coffee?". With my friends we even drive out of the city to get a coffee somewhere far so that we can pass the time that way. I'm going to miss this city so much...

Oh yeah and then a bit off-topic: They payd my CAF (it was about time..) and I didn't have to pay my rent this month :P Les Halles here I come! I'm going to buy all the books that I want.

Exam month

Hello guys. Why is it that always when I want to update my blog something comes up and I don't?

Well anyhow. My old computer broke.. So I'm not going to update things from my trip to Barcelona because I don't have any pictures. I also can't get pictures from my phone nor from my camera to this laptop I'm using. I'm sorry! Plus to top it all Blogger refuses to add images for some reason :D

I can't believe I have one month left in here! And for these 4 weeks it's all about exams. My last exam is scheduled to be 22.06 and then I'm free for my summer vacation.

I made a list of all the places that I want to visit before going to Finland. My list has now: the cemetary of Père Lachaise, Musée Carnavalet, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and Arènes de Lutèce. I also want to visit the catacombs under Paris. Anyhow now all my plans are on hold because my feet is broken. I have stress fraction and I'm using crutches. Last week we had every day more than 25C and I didn't leave my room because it's too much trouble :D also I don't like it that I have to ask my friends to go to a store for me and so on.

Lately we have had a lot of farewell parties and now this building feels so empty.. Two of my best friends from this floor left recently and it's not the same when leaving my room. Almost everyone leaves this month and I'll be here with my French friends untill the end.

Now the plan is that my momo is going to get me with a car from Finland :) She is coming here in the beginning of July and then we do a roadtrip of 3 weeks around Europe! The current plan is the following: I meet my mom in Hamburg and we continue from there to Dresden - Prague - Bratislava - Wien - Innsbruck - Switcherland - Lyon - Paris - Hamburg. Also from one city in Germany I'm going to get some guinea pigs and bring them to Finland :) I can't wait, I miss pets so much!

With one of my best friends we got an apartement from Finland and we'll be living there in a 60 square meters apartment. I'm really happy about that. I also bought a car and my mom is taking care of it atm.  I'm also getting a puppy when my friends dog has puppies next time! My plan is to also start breeding guinea pigs. Everything is falling in place.

Oh yeah I almost forgot: I got my CAF! After fighting with them for 7 months! Go France..

I'm going to miss Paris a lot so I'll try and enjoy my last month here :) Pusuja!

Fighting for my CAF

Helloo!

So I called some office to know about my CAF situation.. Turns out that I have to send them 3 papers that I've already sent because they have lost it or something. I just love this country!

I have to send them a copy of my insurance meaning my EU health card. I've already send it but the woman I spoke to told me that I need some other insurance. Well, for the other exchange students the EU health card had worked so I'm sending a copy of it again. I might also write to the letter "FINLAND IS IN EU (idiot)"

Other thing I need is another "attestation sur l'honneur". This is what my friend wrote and I just copied it:

"Je soussignée NAME atteste sur l’honneur que je dispose pour moi-même (et le cas échéant pour ma famille) de ressources personnelles suffisantes afin de subvenir mes besoins.

Je déclare être informé(e) que cette condition est indispensable pour la régularisation de mon dossier."

then where, when and your signature and voilà

Last but not least they want my certificat scolaire AGAIN. I'm just sending a copy of my student card.

Again, a list what you need for your CAF:

- copy off passport

- copy of student card (or certificat scolaire)

- copy of EU health card (both sides!)

- copy of original birth certificate

- copy of translated birth cert

- that letter ^

For me I had to order a birth certificate from Finland with a paper telling that it was all correct and it costed 46e. If you are going on an exchange to France better do this beforehand :)

I was really pissed off because they didn't send me anything from CAF office telling what I have to send them. But maybe next month I'll have CAF!

l'Attestation sûr l'honneur

So for CAF I had to write l'attestation sûr l'honneur. I found this really difficult because in Finland we don't do stuff like this. It took some time for me to even found out what it was..

In the end I asked my French-Finnish friend Emilia to help me :) it was nice of her to help me. L'attestation sûr l'honneur is a piece of paper in which you swear that you aren't working. I decided to post a model. It's exactly the letter that I wrote with my friend's help and by using models that I found.

Name                                                                                Where, the date

Adress

(SUBJECT) Attestation sûr l'honneur


Madame, Monsieur,


Je souhaite faire une demande de bourse afin de financer mon logement universitaire.


Je soussigné (NAME) preparant le diplôme de (YOUR STUDIES).


J'atteste sûr l'honneur ne percevoir aucune rémunération quelle qu'elle soit.


Dans l'attente, recevez, Madam, Monsieur, mes salutation les meilleurs.

                                                                     (NAME)
                                                                     (SINGNATURE)


I would have found it helpful if someone had done this so I hope this helps someone :) sorry for all the possible mistakes in spelling...

New semester

Salut!

My next semester started and I'm so relaxed and enjoying it so much. This semester is much easier than the last one because we have less lessons. We are going to have a lot of laboratory courses but it's ok.

People started talking today that we are going to get the results for our exams this week.. I'm not so sure I want to see them! On the other hand I "only" have to do 45 credits this year so even if I only passed one exam worth 5 credits I'm closer to my goal.

This month I'm going back to Finland for a little trip! I can't wait to see my dog and guinea pigs.. We have our winter vacation next month and my mom needs me in Finland. We are going to have our spring break of two weeks in April and I'm planning a trip to Prague and Dresden for that. I have a friend who lives in Czech Republic and I'd like to use this opportunity because I've never been there. One of my Finnish friends is in Dresden now to do her exchange, so I'm thinking about visiting her too in spring break.

 Last week first people left for their home countries.. The farewell party was bittersweet. Especially I miss my German friend Lisa. I'm planning on visiting her in April.

As you can see from the pictures winter here in Paris is just.. awful. Now we started to have days when we actually have -1C but it's really nothing. I actually took up jogging because it's nice to run when it's not too hot. Of course every friend of mine is complaining like it would be too cold for them to be. In Finland it's -30C now and I can't wait to go there in a couple of weeks :P

All of my CAF papers are almost ready. They send me a letter that I need to give them a birth certificate (which we don't do in Finland..), a note from the University that I'm attending and a letter telling them that I have money to pay my rent. I was really amused about the last one. Like I'd tell them if I didn't have money to pay!

This week I've been sending e-mails all over Finland finding out what I have to do about this birth certificate thing. The paper has to be in French including information of my parents. First of all because we don't have birth certificates in Finland they have to give me some other paper that costs 35 €. Then to prove that this paper is good they are going to stamp it and send me another paper that costs 11 €. This is what I found out from the embassy of Finland in Paris. Then I send an e-mail to the register office in my hometown and they told me that they don't do the paper in French and asked me to send an e-mail to the capital of Finland. So now I have a letter coming from Helsinki with all of the papers that I need and I hope that I'll get this CAF-thing sorted out next week!

Yesterday I visited my friends in here and we had a little BBQ. Tomorrow I'm going to Paris for a gig of Synthetic Waterfall in "Le Klub". Enjoy my wintry pictures! ;) Adieu

French "winter" and exam week

 Before I came here I knew that French people don't know anything about winter. I was prepared to laugh at them when the temperature hits -5C and they are freezing to death.

This winter have denied me this pleasure.

It's between +5C and +10C every day. I'm still using my summer clothes. We haven't seen snow or ice here. People have been telling me that this has been a really warm winter.

 Well today I took pictures of trees that we have in our backyard. One of them is actually making flowers. And still people manage to complain how cold it is.. This weather is perfect! It's not too warm and not too cold :)

The only minus side of this weather is that they have the heating on in our rooms and it's awful. At this very moment I have a window open because it's just unbearable when it's closed. I have heard from my friends that they are sitting in their rooms almost naked. Especially during Christmas it has been really warm in the rooms and I'm happy that I was in Finland back then.

Well anyway. I got my papers for CAF. They responded to me that I need to fill them a paper telling that I have money to pay my rent.... Oooookay. Like I'd tell them if I didn't! It's nice to finally have some answers from them. It turned out that they are going to pay the allowance straight to my residence and not for me. They are paying all the allowances starting from October so I'm going to have a couple months of "free rent" :) I know this because my friends have already got their CAFs.

This week is our exam week. I'm lucky and I have 6.. Today I had my exam of Organic chemistry and I really hope that I passed it. Tomorrow I'm going to have Quantum chemistry, on Thursday I'll have Inorganic chemistry and German and finally on Friday I'll have Molecule-orbital theory (however we translate it) and then I'm free for two days! Also some day I should do a level test of English.

I decided to take an English course too this semester. I talked about it with my Uni first and then I talked with people here. I talked a bit with the professor keeping the courses and she welcomed me to her course. I'm not getting any credits that I can use in my bachelor for this because I've already done all my English courses in Finland, this is mostly just for fun.

Me and my friend Lisa went to see Gospel last weekend! It was amazing. I'm going to get the pictures from her later today and I hope to post something.

Well here I go again to revise for my exam tomorrow.. Have fun :)

Oh so French

Today I returned my CAF (local housing allowance) papers. I'll see the results in TEN TO TWELVE WEEKS. Jesus I was so surprised when they told me that it's going to take so long. No worries, I didn't need the money anyway.. In Finland it's illegal if it takes more than two weeks of the offices to handle your papers about allowances. I guess I won't be wining about those two weeks when I got back to Finland.

I'm really starting to get a handle of my French needed in lectures Now I can sometimes even understand what the professor is telling on the lectures without studying like crazy after the lesson. It's actually really funny that I can talk about wave functions and Gibbs free energy in French but I can't tell about my life or use different tenses well. I'm really gratefull to my friend K who has helped me a lot with my homeworks. She is always so patient and helps me with my French too. Yesterday we went to the libryary of Pompidou and calculated Quantum Chemistry for 3 hours. She would have been so much quicker without me but she explained all the stuff that I didn't get. Long live friendly people!

Talking about friendly people the family whose children I watch asked me, my mom and my aunt to join them for dinner when my mom and aunt come to France next month. My mom and aunt were so excited about it :) I'm also really happy to see my relatives. I hope mom brings me a lot of salty liqourice, I miss it so much! Last Friday I realized in a store that I didn't want to eat chocolate nor salty snacks but I wanted to eat somehing good: salmiakki! (which is the Finnish word for salty liqourice) I tried to buy black Mentos but these taste more like liqourice and these are actaully really bad..

I'm still wating for my ImagineR. I have a friend who has wated for more than a month now for hers. I'm going to send my papers again this week because that's what they asked my friend to do when she went asking about her card.  It really sucks not to have it because every weekend I could go for free to Paris but now I have to pay 7e/day for a weekend ticket.

I've bought a couple of shirt and vests here. I'm really good at buying useless shoes so I bought a pair yesterday. I just couldn't leave them to the store! Belleville is a good place to stop for shopping. I should find something for winter because I've left almost all my winter clothes to Finland. Also when I try to sleep I always wish I had pyjamas becuse a top isn't just enough. I'm sleeping with woolen socks. I think this is really interesting. In Finland it's not this cold indoors when it's -30C outdoors! Moreover I always feel like it's colder inside than it's outside. I really miss Finnish insulation materials.. AND I don't have a radiator in my room! It's now +15C outside and I'm freezing in here. I'm really looking forward to winter :D

While I'm at it I could talk about living here. This residence universitairé is just a huge building with 5 floors full of rooms where students live. We have shared toilets and a shared kitchen. I hate it when people run around the corridors after 12 in the evening when I'm trying to sleep. Also talking in the corridor instead of inside the rooms seems to be a nice sport for everyone. Also during weekends they have competiotions of who has the loudest party while their door is open. People also smoke cigarettes and weed in their rooms and the corridor smells really lovely after that. I feel like I'm the nagging neighbour if I go complain about everything all te time so most of the time I let it be. But oh my when I once wanted to sing in my room at 15H00 on Sunday there was immidiately someone telling me to shut up! It's actually sad that my singing voice bothers people more than weed :D

Last weekend was also really interesting because for some reason out kitchen was sealed off. I was really happy when I came home on Friday and realized that the kitchen is locked. I couldn't cook at all last weekend and I couldn't have tea this morning before going to lectures. Now the kitchen is open again. I think that the cleaner just forgot (or "forgot") to open it before going away for the weekend.

Anyhow I think that's all folks! Now I'm off to buy my tickets for DisneyLand Paris where we are going 16th of October! Wuhuu!

Finally in Paris..

Hello pumpkins!

So today at 14.25 I arrived to Paris. I had a lot of problems with my trains. I forgot to take a seat reservation with my InterRail ticket to the train from Antwerp to Paris: so they kicked me out in Brussels. I reserved a place from Brussels to Lille and from Lille to Paris-Nord. My phone wasn't working for the entire time and I had a friend wating in Paris for me. Note to self: be more carefull!!

It's really good that I have a friend here. First of all because of the incident with the trains I was late for getting my key for my dorm. Luckily my friend is a nice guy so I can spent the night here at his familys place. He helped me with shopping for pillows and such. He also helped me to open my own French phone number! Everyone I asked suggested prepaid so I'm having one with the company called Orange. It costed 15e to open the telephone subscriber connection and then I loaded speaking time to it with 35e. When you buy calling time with 35e you get 10 euros for free.

Tomorrow he or his mom is going to help me with buying the ImagineR card for trains and also with getting the key for my apartment. I also have to start checking how to get CAF (local housing allowance if I wrote it correctly).

But well. Now I have people around me who can help me with my prononciation so I'm off to study some French. I have my first day at the Uni tomorrow.. I'm so nervous! Like first day at school!

Sleep well