Trying to take care of things in Metz Oct. 5th

Today I went to Metz to talk to someone about taking classes at the university. It’s a thirty-minute train ride and not bad at all if you can get someone to drive you (Francoise gave me a lift before her 8 am class). Once I got there I had some time before my meeting so I started walking towards the downtown. I had a map, and got a little turned around ‘cause I stopped a few times to take pictures and occasionally thought I was on a different road. It was a very pleasant walk (although the temperature had dropped about 10 or more degrees from the past days and no one thought to tell me about it, so occasionally I was a little chilled).

I picked up a city bus map at the tourism office and headed off to campus for my meeting. I was, of course, early. I decided to knock on the door anyway since I heard movement in the office. The woman I had a meeting with is Madame Lecolle, the director of Language Sciences; she was very nice. She helped me see when classes were actually being offered and explained how they worked a little to me; she particularly explained that the students have to take both the lecture and discussion and the teacher can choose to lecture during either hour. This could be a problem for me since I can only attend classes on Wednesdays – the hour designated as lecture. I’m planning on going next Wednesday and talking with the professor of the class I choose. I’ve already missed 4 weeks of classes at this point though, so I don’t know how things will work out.

Other than that I tried to get a phone and alarm clock. No luck. Again. The phone was the most frustrating though. I can’t do the type of phone plan I wanted because I don’t have a French ID… I did talk to a very helpful woman at SFR (one of the large phone companies in France) who showed me in print (and gave it to me) how to get out of a phone contract for free when I go back home. So it looks like I might be trying to do that – get a contract for longer than my stay and then cancel if I’m not going to be in France the following year. I’m going to take a close look at the information before I do anything though.