The Accommodations

I honestly still haven’t made up my mind how I feel about the accommodations here.  They aren’t really bad enough to be worth complaining about (compared to some countries, I’m sure these residences are wonderful) but they do still leave a lot to be desired.  The worst part in my mind is the showers.  They at least have hot water, which is more than I can say for the ones in Senegal, but they operate almost the same way as those sinks where you push a button on top and it takes about 10 seconds for the button to work its way back to the top, at which point the water shuts off.  The shower’s button probably lasts closer to 30 seconds, but it is still ridiculously annoying to have to be pushing a button a couple of times a minute just to keep the water flowing.  The “kitchen” that we were promised is also a disappointment, as we are merely given a fridge in each of our rooms, and then a microwave and sink that is shared by the entire floor.  From what I have heard from the other European students here, France is actually renowned for having really poor residence halls for its university students.  I suppose this is what happens when the students aren’t being forced to pay thousands of dollars for their education.  Still, I suppose it is nice to have our own space.  I would definitely prefer crummy residence halls to being in another homestay for the entire semester.  It will be interesting to see if the internet connection stays up this time.  The reason that it took me such a long time to start posting in the blog again is that we are not allowed Wi-Fi in the residence hall, so I had to bring my computer onto the campus to re-download the Ethernet driver for my computer, which was apparently never properly installed.  I managed to get this task accomplished just in time to have the entire residence’s internet crash.  Thankfully, it only took them four days to fix the internet, rather than the week we were originally quoted.  We all do find it rather annoying though, as the residence that we are staying in is solely for international students, so they are aware that everyone in the dorm is reliant on the internet in order to stay in touch with their friends and family back home.  We’ve tried going out to cafés and such to find Wi-Fi, but so far the only place in town we’ve been able to find with a reliable connection has been McDonald’s.  Hopefully this time the internet will stay up, but I’m afraid I can’t promise anything.  Since I am staying in the International Residence, there is quite a mix of students who are in the hall with me.  The majority seem to be Japanese, since I think there was a large school group which all came together.  I have also met students from New Zealand, Tunisia, England, Germany, Poland, Palestine and Brazil.  Those with common languages do tend to drift together, since it is nice to speak in our own tongue during our downtime, so I have been spending a lot of time with the girls from England.  We also tend to eat lunch with the Germans, since they have a fairly good grasp of English.