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It's a beautiful day here in Dublin, which is all the more precious because it's so rare. There's nothing more wonderful than a good summer's day in Ireland, in my opinion. The sky is a deep blue, there's a light breeze, you can hear the faint cry of gulls. It has none of the pressure of a summer's day anywhere else. It's warm, but still refreshing. No one expects you to be out in a bikini and sarong. People make a point of mentioning it wherever you go, at the post office, in the supermarket
[ - ''Ah it's a beautiful day today, isn't it?''
- ''It is, yes.''
- ''Wonderful weather!''
- ''It's pretty warm out.''
- ''Ah sure, it's gorgeous!''
- ''Yep'']
You can't deny people in Ireland are friendly. In fact, it often makes me feel guilty, having been conditioned to display a tight-lipped sort of secrecy in my dealings with strangers. The other day, whilst making a boeuf bourguignon (recipe to follow), a guy came to get me to sign for a letter, and said ''Are ye makin' somethin' nice, are ye?''. I just sort of looked at him, startled. ''I'm sorry?'' he grinned, ''I said, are ye makin' somethin' nice fer yer tea?'' I signed his little digital thing, and said coolly: ''Yes. Stew.'' And shut the door. He probably thought 'frigid British cow' but it wasn't actually me being rude - more just taken aback by a question that to him was simply being friendly. It happens a lot - someone in the shop comments on something you're buying, or the bus driver interacts with you, like the other day when I got on and he shouted at me: ''Stop playin' with yer feckin' phone, you can count your money on the bus, now GET ON!'' It's sort of nice. It feels natural and more human. Not like in the UK where everyone keeps a physical and emotional distance from everyone they come across. Perhaps I should have invited the letter guy in to sample the stew (not innuendo).

So anyway, in an attempt to find out more about my housing situation in September, yesterday I emailed Yannick, and got this reply:

"Je suis absent du 13 juillet au 16 août.

Pour les BGF-BGE vous pouvez contacter [Madame X]

Bonnes vacances."

So I emailed Madame X, and got this reply:

"Bonjour,
je suis en congés du 29 juillet au 5 septembre inclus.
Pour tout urgence concernant les BGF et BGE vous pouvez contacter [yannick] à l'adresse suivante : [email address]

très cordialement"

Then, the scholarship woman forwarded me a document about what to do to get set up financially, and she included a letter from the CROUS, which, at the bottom, includes the following line:

"Compte tenu du parc de logements disponibles, il ne peut y avoir d'engagement formel du CNOUS et du CROUS pour assurer un logement en résidence universitaire a l'étudiant".

Which, despite the non-sensical wordiness of it, basically means 'we can't guarantee you 100% that we will have somewhere for you to live'. For fuck's sake France, honestly. What is the *deal* with this naffing off on holiday for two months of the year? I'm not too worried though, will just see what happens when they're all back from their 7 week holiday in the South of France. When they sashay into their office, mocha frappucinos in hand, crisp white shirts buttoned loosely over their trim, freshly-tanned bodies, blowing the dust off their monitors as they turn the computers on, honking away at each others' jokes and accounts of encounters with the peasants down in Draguignan, and then BAM. That's right, it's the annoying English girl who has flooded your inbox with irritating emails. NOW DEAL WITH IT.

The thing is though, I can't get through to them so I'm guessing it's just not going to be possible for my Dad to take me down there, which is a bit sad really. I feel like I've let him down somehow, which is ridiculous because there's nothing else I could do. He did suggest us going down earlier and me staying in a hotel for a few nights whilst waiting for the room, but....that sort of defeats the purpose, plus I think I'd feel lonely then. Anyway, we discussed him coming to visit in the last week of October, which is when I have a break. And Mum is going to a conference in Zurich, which turns out to be a 40 euro, 2 and a half hour train ride away - not too bad! I'd love for both of them to come and visit. It was great when Dad came to V/Paris to see me and Beefa, and then when Mum came to Chartres....although I remember one day in Chartres, where we had a fight, and I think out of all the days in my life, that's the day I regret the most. She was crying and upset, I can't remember why, but I remember being a total MEAN BITCH to her, and whenever I think back to it, I do that thing where you cringe and actually physically shake your head a bit in an effort to bury the memory. Bit melodramatic, eh?

Another thing I have to deal with today - the uni were asking me how I wanted to pay my fees, and they demanded a response by the 24th of August. The only options on the sheet I have to send back are:

• ''Go ahead and take 3000 out of my bank account - here are my details''
• ''Go ahead and take 3000 out of my bank account in installments of 800 - here are my details''

In fact I can do neither of those, as the scholarship pays for it. So I emailed scholarship woman asking what I should do (the uni being closed until the 24th of August, naturally) and she said to ask them to invoice her, or for me to pay it and for her to deposit 3000 in my account, upon receipt of payment. I don't want to do that second option, since I don't have 3000 lying around, plus even if she fed the mulah into my account, it would result in a budgeting catastrophe for me. So today I'm going to email her and ask her to write a brief letter that I can attach to the stuff to send back to the uni, saying that she will be paying the fees, and to invoice her. That should do the trick! I wish I didn't feel so awful about asking people to do things for me, it makes me feel dreadful, even though I know this is this woman's sole job. I feel like a beggar.

Good news on the shoe side of things - the boots have been shipped to good old Barnoldswick. Which means a phone call to my dearest grandmother is required, so I can casually mention that yet again I've been ordering shit to her house. Oh, other good thing - finalized deed poll came! I am now who I say I am :D

Other things to do include finding my brother a job, making an uncomfortable phone call to ensure that my ex understands he is my ex, getting the balls required to send the scholarship email. Infected eye still being a dickhead. Why won't it just LEAVE ME ALONE?

Sole searching

Eye infection alert! Get them all the time. Woke up at 5 in the morning, blinking, trying to shift the cruddy film that had developed across my right eye.  Feels a little burny, but nothing I can't handle. Eye infections tend to look particularly grotesque on blue eyes. Makes you look a bit mad and junkie-esque. Considering I can't put my lenses in and have lost my glasses (MUST get some....as soon as I get that holy grail of French society, the Carte Vitale), I'm essentially blind for the moment. Got told by Mum to go to the pharmacy, but I'm considering using old-fashioned techniques to try and rid myself  of the gunk. Compresses, salty eye washes (might want to google that, sounds like could possibly have opposite effect?), etc.

Because we moved to Ireland in my last year of secondary school, and because once I'd finished that I left the country, I don't have any friends here. Which means that my time at home, such as now, turns into the life of a housewife minus the being a wife part. I get up, grind some fresh coffee using my Dad's loud and ugly 80s coffee grinding thing (which he has kept for sentimental reasons, because he had it when he lived in East Germany, or something). I then glide around the house alternating between reading books, flicking through glossy magazines, napping on the couch, and making bacon sandwiches. Occasionally I might do a little light laundry, and half an hour before everyone comes home from work, I go on a massive clean-up operation, brushing off breadcrumbs from various counter tops, de-fatifying the frying pan, plumping up the couch cushions.

So I've got not much else to do other than cook for people (tonight - boeuf bourguignon) and organize some Strasbourg stuff. It's quite sad actually - my Dad didn't help me move to Sheffield for uni because I said I would do it myself. He didn't get to come to my graduation because I didn't go myself (might have been a bit weird had he turned up all by his lonesome). So he really wanted to fly to Paris, rent a car, pick me up in the one-horse town I now cannot wait to be rid of, and drive me down to Strasbourg. Except the CROUS are being anal about the whole thing and have told me my room will be available from the first of September. Grr. My Dad checked at work, and he has a meeting on that actual day. So my options are:

• Make the move alone (no big deal, but quite sad as it was something he wanted to do)
• Go down earlier and stay in a hotel for one or two nights so he can drive me down and then get back to Dublin on the 30th
• Hassle the CROUS to see if there can be any give on the date

I'm going to start by attempting option 3, and if that fails - I'll cross that shaky bridge when I get to it. Email has been sent to dear old 'Yannick', the guy in charge of us BGFs - I've received an email from him before, which was very cool, dismissive, and uninformative. I realized that his signature has a link to his email address: except the html is wrong, and links up to someone elses email. I thought about adding that as a P.S., except I realized I could use this as a secret weapon based on his reply to my dates enquiry. If he even so much as DARES to get shirty with me, WHAM! I will destroy your htmling confidence, Yannick. Hehehe. HeeeeeHEEEEEHEHE. BWAHAHEHEHEHEHE! [/end evil laughter]

Anyway! I'm on a mad desperate frenzied search for these boots:

Don't ask me why, they aren't particularly special, but I just *want* them, you know? That's one of the horrors of having your family living in Ireland: a whole world of Britishness is spread out in front of you, but without the access to the perks. They've got (practically only)  British shops here, so you can only use the British website, but inevitably there's always some sort of stupid fucking problem, because newsflash, Ireland isn't in the UK.
So I got an email saying (in a nice, jovial tone): "Thanks for your recent communication, Hannah. Your order has now been cancelled". Noooo. Called up pleasant Glasgow call centre. In this particular case, the Stupid Irish/British Problem was...they ship abroad from warehouses only, and they don't stock those particular boots in their warehouses. Why don't you just get your own shoe shops, Ireland? Same with telly: they have RTE, their Irish channel, but it's shit and no-one watches it. People watch BBC Northern Ireland instead, but their papers give normal BBC listings. So you think you're watching the Grumpy Guide to Food, and instead end up watching The Impressionists: let's learn more about them, and their boring works.

So once the nice woman at the call centre gave me the downlow on the warehouse Irish/British Problem, I cheated the system by ordering them to my gran's address in Barnoldswick. Felt pretty self-satisfied, until I logged on to my 'account' on the Office website, and it now has the same 2 pair of boots as 2 different orders, both with the status: 'PENDING', which over the last 3 days has been modified to 'pending', 'Pending' and 'PENDing'. Very descriptive, Office.
I suppose all I do now is sit back and wait for the fuckers to arrive. Maybe I'll get two pairs. Maybe I'll get one. Maybe I'll get none.

I vote the last option.

Becoming an assistant + CROUS accommodation

So the money I will be receiving from the scholarship clocks in at a ''not-too-shabby-but-not-too-glamorous-either'' €800 a month. I'm getting a room from the CROUS in a university residence - which is apparantly a privilege, since they are very hard to get. Essentially, the way it works in France is getting government-owned university accommodation is linked in with getting government grants. Around April, you fill in a hefty pile of papers, send it off, and if you're poor enough, you get:

a) grants, and

b) a CROUS room.

Because all French parents look after their children financially (food, accommodation, cinema tickets, trips to Subway, holidays, new clothes, pocket money, etc) until they are 32, you could be 18, or you could be 23: the CROUS don't care. They want to know what your parents earn. If your parents are poor enough, you could be eligible for a grant. Only if you're French though. You can still be eligible if you're an EU citizen, but you need to prove your parents have been working here in France for 2 years. So basically - not very many of us foreigners are going to get the gift of government aid during our stay here in this delightful country. Which means that I am extremely lucky with this room.

I didn't know this was part of the deal, so was surprised when I got a random email from a CROUS person informing me of the situation. As far as I can gather, here is what you're likely to get in any CROUS residence:

• A studio: pretty self explanatory. The most expensive (although all CROUS accommodation is cheap)
• A 'renovated' room: this means a room with bed, desk, storage space, shower and WC
• A 'non-renovated room: as above, but with shared showers and WC per floor

What I'm hoping for is a renovated room - I don't mind sharing a kitchen, but I have been down the dark, dingy road of shared showers, and I do NOT want to wash my hair in a little box full of floating plasters and leg hair. Having said that, since I am also not a pussy, I will not be totally freaking out if I do have to.

Anyway, that little info de-tour did have a point, the point being: my rent isn't going to be very much. I'm going to estimate it at around €300 a month, but I'm fairly sure it'll come to less. This gives me €500 to play with, which is already not bad going (I can get by on €100 a week), but let's face it - I want to buy stuff. Which means, one of my best options is going to be picking up that trusty (rusty?) old card: being an English assistant. There's two ways you can get this gig (and if €700 a month for 10 hours work a week sounds like a good gig to you, then give it a go):

• A programme. You apply through the British Council if you're, you know, BRITISH, or TAPIF if you're American. No idea what the Irish/Candians/Australians/Jamaicans/South Africans/New Zealanders/you get the idea do. But I'm assuming you could just type 'language assistant france [your country]' into Google and find out. How do these programmes work? I can only speak for the British Council, but as far as I can gather, it works the same for everyone. You apply (don't sit around picking at your fingernails: do it a.s.a.p). In your application, you select your preferred areas/towns. You wait for their letter. You get placed somewhere. You go.
• If you forgot to apply/couldn't be bothered/didn't know in time it would be something for you to do, you apply through the more chilled out yet more precarious way: you go directly to the 'rectorat'. Think of the 'rectorat' as the local education authority. Basically, do a google search for the rectorat in the region/town you're interested in, and then send them your CV and cover letter (non EU people need to have their carte de sejour/visa shit sorted. No one will be taking care of that for you). If you're EU, no worries, just send your stuff off. To be honest, I'd advise calling (as much of a pain in the ass as that is) first, or at least emailing, so the woman in charge of English assistants has a vague idea of who you are. I'd also advise POSTING your application and not emailing it, because for some reason French 'fonctionnaires' don't like to use their email (or don't like replying to emails, rather). The crap thing about this system, is that you are basically a second-class applicant, in the sense that you will only be offered a job if there aren't enough assistants coming through the programme. Or if an assistant drops out. Or if a school suddenly decides they want an assistant at the last minute. Which means you will only find out whether you have a job or not in September or October.

So I sent my stuff off today to the rectorat in Strasbourg. If I can secure an assistantship, I'll be doing something I quite enjoyed when I was in Chartres (much prefer teaching kids, as opposed to the supposed 'adults'of the university), as well as something that will bring my monthly income up o a quite comfortable figure - AND, with 18 hours of lectures, and 10 hours teaching, I will definitely not be rushed off my feet.