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!

Ranking

 In France everything is about ranking: who is the best student, which is the best university, which is the best faculty. They do this starting when they are little kinds at the age of 4 when they go to school and do this to the bitter end. In Finland we don't have this system: actually in Finland we don't have a thing called "a failing student".

At the university here all the notes you get are on a wall for everyone to see how good (or bad..) you did. They show everyone your student number, name and points you got. In Finland we have the same system with the difference that only you know your points because the paper shows only our student numbers and points.

For someone I guess this system is a motivation because you have to get a good note because everyone sees how you did. For me it was awful. I'm an exchange student so I guess everyone knew that I'm not going to shine with my numbers but I didn't like people looking at them. Only for one course here they showed only the student numbers when revealing the grades. But on an extra line before my student number there was a little text "Erasmus" and I'm the only exchange student here. Gee I wonder who that is..

In France you get points up to 20 and getting more than 10,5 means that you passed the course. For me this was really confusing because in Finland we get a mark from 1 to 5 and one means you passed. If you fail a course they say you did. So here when I looked at my marks for the first time I didn't know if I passed or not. And what's worse: they show everyone how badly you failed.

This week I also learned that the faculty of Uni Paris-Sud 11 is the best faculty of science and the ranking is really rough. I talked with some of the foreign students who have been studying here since their first year of uni and they told me that when they get 14/20 it causes a stir. "How can that person get 14/20!! He is not French! He doesn't almost speak French!" I think this gives an idea of how hard it is for the students here.

I was really confused when people came to congratulate me in person when I got 16/20 from German. But after finding out how the system in this university goes I'm not at all surprised.

So how am I going to get 45 credits when half of the French people studying here are failing their classes? Here we can try every exam two times and between these two times there are several months. In Finland we can try every exam 3 times and there is less time between each try so that we don't forget everything that we learned. I can try the exams that I failed here in 5 months and I'm really hoping to pass them.

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 :)

Sushi evening

 Hello lovers!

This has been a really nice week. On Monday we had someone cutting the power from our building ALL THE TIME. Because of this I lost 1,5 hours revising time for my exams on Tuesday.. I'm sure it was someone who had his exams last week so he could just do whatever he wanted this week. It was really hard to read when the lights went out every 2 minutes for longer period of time.

On Tuesday we had a sushi evening with other exchange students! It was so much fun! In reality I hate cooking (I'd rather starve than cook). Cooking in a group made it really nice and I actually helped with rolling the sushi. I think I'm going to do this in Finland with my friends :) This time all the pictures are from the sushi evening.

After the exams in L3 of chemistry we had 5 days of vacation. I used two of these days to go to work.. On Wednesday I went to work around four and I slept there to start working around 7 in the morning. On Thursday I was alone with the younger child the whole day for the first time. It actually really enjoyed it! Of course changing diapers isn't my favorite thing but still. I tried to talk as much English with him as I could but I still have to wait a bit before he starts answering me.

On Thursday evening we played draw and guess with the parents of the family and their friends.  The cards were in French so they had to translate the cards for me but I think it was OK. I had fun and I guess that's the most important thing.

Friday was a free day here in France so one of my friends asked me to go see The Adventures of Tintin with her. She wanted to see the original version with French subtitles. We went to Le Forum des Halles too see the film. There are two movie theaters so of course in the beginning we were in the wrong one..

After the movie we went eating and then shopping. Actually we didn't have too much time for shopping in other stores after finding fnac. fnac in Le Forum is HUGE. It's in three floors and every floor is so big that I was completely lost in there. I was really happy about the books that I found: I bought three comics and grammar book of German and a conjugation book of French. Now I just have to get around to reading them...






Today I went shopping to Paris all on my own. In the beginning it was my meaning to see one of my friend there but in the end we ended up being in different places in different times and we didn't see each other. I was quite happy all the same! Now I really have confidence that I can find my way around Paris.

In the beginning I spent a couple of hours in Le Forum des Halles when I was trying to find shoes. In the end I bought only one waffle from there (which was really good). After that I decided to go to Rue de Rivoli - which is a really big shopping street - to find my favorite store here: Jennyfer. I ended up buying a lot of stuff and I'm really happy for finally finding clothes for winter. I also found shoes. We don't have Jennyfer in Finland so I guess I have to go there as much as possible.

Ready to eat!

This reminds me that I have to whine about the French sizing. In Finland I'm size S and in here I'm L!! If I'm lucky I can find something with M that fits me. Today I tried one skirt and the biggest size they had didn't fit me.

I think these were the most burning subjects at the moment. My mom, aunt and cousin are coming to visit me in three weeks! And I'm going to Finland in one month and 5 days. Time just flies past here.

I think today I finally fell in love with Paris :) At the moment I so don't want to go back to Finland.

The best exam ever

I had the exam of quantum chemistry just now. It didn't go that well, but I loved taking the exam.

Let us start the explanation with saying that when I told the professor of quantum chemistry that I'm an Erasmus student, I was immediately on his list of "students that need special attention". He is generally a really nice person, he is really passionate about his work and he is helping everyone equally. Always when I don't understand something during lessons he comes to me and explains the thing to me with patience and really easy French. He has also helped me with my homework that we have had every week.

During the exam he came to me 3 times telling me that I can do the exam in English if I want. Earlier I've asked him if I can use English if I don't remember some word in French (and of course he gave this his blessing). I had only little idea of how the easier exercises were done, but I managed with the hardest one that we have had recently in class. The professor specially came to tell me that the last question was hard. Never the less I started with it and after he came to check on me again he said that it was going well :) The prof also helped me a little with small stuff in the exercises. I think that might have made the others a bit jealous..

I'm really sure if I were French I wouldn't have passed the exam with what I managed, but I'm actually really happy. The fact that I could do the exercise that we have done recently shows that my French has really gotten better! This is what I told the professor too: in the beginning it was impossible for me to follow the lessons and  to take good notes. It was really motivating to take the exam to see my own progress :)

I still have one exam to do: inorganic chemistry. I better continue reading to that!