Welcome to my blog!

Hello!

I have been inspired by Miró and by the excellent film Julie & Julia to keep a blog of my Erasmus year abroad. I hope in turn people reading this will be inspired to come and visit me!

I am currently in the beautiful French city of Rennes which is in the region of Bretagne (Brittany) and the department of Ille-et-Villain (the Ille and the Villain are the rivers which run through the city).

For the first semester this year I will be attending the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) Rennes which is more commonly known as Sciences-Po (short for Sciences-Politiques = Political Science). The photo above is of the main building which is made up of 2 courtyards, a big one and a small one. The buildings are quite old and very pretty but of course behind the main building used in all the publicity there is a nice 70's style block of classrooms. The IEP is a "Grande Ecole" specialising in political science, history, law and management. All the French students also study at least 2 foreign languages and go away for a whole year in their third year which means that generally they are interested in/nice to the exchange students, partly because they want to practice their languages and partly because they have all either just come back from a year abroad or are about to head off on one of their own. So far, I have been at the IEP for only one week with French students but have had offers to copy notes if I need to three times.

Today was an integration day for all new students, both exchange and first years and there was a sort of mini Freshers' Fayre type thing in the big courtyard where all the student associations (there are only about 10) set up stalls so we could sign up for activities and language exchanges. There is quite a lot going on considering there are only about 600 students in total. I signed up for the Club de Cuisine (Julie & Julia still in my head!) and something else which I'm not quite sure what it is.

This morning, we also had a meeting where we met our French "marraines et parrains" (godparents!). All foreign students have been paired up with at least one 2nd year student and one 4th year student so that we have someone specific to ask if we need help with anything and so that we get to know at least a couple of Frenchies. It's much easier to hang out all the time with the other Erasmus and exchange students because we have already done 2 weeks of intensive French classes together but hopefully now we will mix a little bit more with the French (and stop speaking English all the time!).

So that's all for my first post, I'm still working out how all the functions work so it should get better as the year goes by with more photos and things.

Next blog: brief resume of the last 3 weeks!!!