My oaths of last week about sharing a room may have been premature. The rent is dirt cheap and my/our room is nice. I try to comfort myself by making plans to buy new clothes with the leftover money, turn into a shining beacon of Parisian luxe and swagger, and thus compensate for the ensuing lack of privacy. Despite these reassuring dreams, I still spend the days leading up to the room mate’s arrival fretting about how weird I am and how I can’t deal with other people’s weirdness. I fear sharing a room will interfere with my personal space, though my interest in this essentially boils down to wanting the freedom to nap as much as I want, lounge around half-naked and eat my signature dish of ‘fried crap with egg’ to an overture of loud, trashy rap, without being judged too harshly. I briefly devise a strategy of whining and being so annoying that my room mate leaves our gorgeous fifth arrondissement, unobstructed-view-over-Paris apartment wholly to me. This plan is ruined when the room mate arrives and is really lovely, so I get on with my life and buy three new pairs of jeans. 

French, and other European universities, get a lot of stick in the international press, where they are compared unfavourably with American and British ways of doing things. I’ve been warned that the French university won’t help me with my enrolment, that I’m unlikely to make friends in classes (no freshers’ week: gasp!) and that the workload will be very relaxed. I arrive at my first enrolment meeting (having, incidentally been clearly told where to go, what to bring and what to expect by the Sorbonne faculty), with an open(ish) mind. The talk drags – the lecturer likes the sound of his own voice – but a friendly classmate points to things on the handout I can’t find and I manage to follow along. The staff are all l’assiduité en cours this (basically meaning attendance and engagement) and l’assiduité en cours that (the ‘that’ being, if you don’t come, you’ll get kicked off the course). I realise I’m not in for the easy ride people picture as the ‘Erasmus dream’. 

I’m quite sanguine about it all though. Being on Erasmus exchange, I can do whatever courses I want, and doing what I want pleases me a great deal and makes me more likely to behave well (like a small child, or a puppy). My lessons haven’t begun yet, so I’m frittering away my free time in Paris à flâner (meaning to kind of float or loaf around; both of which I do well). Right now, I’m off to use a loyalty card I have for a coffee shop with a charming Barista, whom I am steadily seducing with my exotically poor pronunciation.