Colles - Oral exams and Christmas shopping

Hello pumpkins !

Just telling about colles. I think the best translation in English would be "oral exams" so I'll use that from now on :)

This week I have only 4 oral exams, French and German courses and one laboratory of inorganic chemistry. That means that my amount of work dropped from the normal 30-35 hours/week to 10 hours! I have to revise but I still feel like I'm on holidays.

Yesterday I can my oral exam of inorganic chemistry. I wouldn't party with the results.. But the professor also told me that inorganic chemistry is really hard so I feel a bit better. I still have time to read for the final exam. Today I had my oral exam for orbital molecular theory (or whatever the translation is..) so I'll still have organic chemistry and quantum chemistry to do.

Today was a nice day because I had 40 minutes of stuff to do. When I went to my oral exam I wasn't well prepared (heh) but I think I did really well! I almost had a heart attack in the exam when the professor started speaking Swedish. She read my name and asked if I was Finnish and then decided that she suggested to keep the exam in Swedish (she was from Sweden). I can't describe the feeling when I go to an exam that you think that is in French and suddenly someone wants to keep in Swedish :D I started sentences in Swedish and ended them in French so in the ends we had the exam in French. It has been such a long time since I spoke Swedish - like 3 years - that I just couldn't switch from French to Swedish.

Tomorrow I'm going to pack my back and on Saturday I'm heading to Finland. My friends told me that there is snow now so I can go :) I can't wait to see my pets!!

I have already bought some things to bring to Finland for my friends, but I still have to find something. Last weekend we went to Paris for Christmas shopping with my friend E. She is from England so we started talking in French but after maybe 10 minutes changed to English. She is so much better in French that she should be explaining everything she says so it's easier to talk in English.

There are huge Christmas markets on Champs-Elysées and La Defense. We went to Printemps first which is a huge shopping mall in Paris. It was packed with people and there were polices on the streets to make sure that cars can drive because people crossing roads were blocking all traffic. I didn't find anything from Printemps but after that we headed to Champs-Elysées. The original idea was that we'd check out La Defense too but there was just too much to see in Champs-Elysées that we didn't have time.

Champs-Elysées at the end of the Ferris wheel was packed with stands with different things. I found stuff to bring to my grandparents from there and I was really happy. We also tasted Glühwein meaning hot wine. In Finland we always drink that stuff with red wine but here I tasted it with white wine. I have to say I like the red version more.

Sadly the Christmas market was there only for one week. I really recommend it to everyone!

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!