So long, farewell Cergy Residence du Port

I moved out of the dorm this week. I was surprised at how sad I was to leave considering how much I had been looking forward to living in Paris. I think I was sad to leave my friends because it reminded me that although I am only moving out of the dorm now, in 6 months we will all be going home or moving on and I will never see this bunch of people in the same place together again.

The night before I left I organized a few drinks in the club room and everyone was very sweet and came, despite the having a tonne of work. It was very casual but it was nice because this was the first place I had met my classmates when I first moved into the dorm last August.

Wednesday I caught a cab with all my bags to my new home in Le Marais. I thought it was going to be relatively straight forward. I had only one suitcase when I moved here, my dorm was only small, so how much stuff could I have? Well the taxi was rammed full with 4 suitcases and a whole lot of other small bags. Needless to say I don’t think the taxi driver was very happy. He was very nice about it though – I think he felt a bit sorry for me.

I got all my things into my new place and unpacked some of the bags before heading off the Chinese New Year celebrations organized by some girls in our class. We had a Chinese banquet and Karaoke room for the afternoon. I have to say I was really impressed at how much everyone got into it, I was even more impressed with the singing ability of my classmates. When I go to Karaoke in Australia everyone is terrible. We usually have to have a few drinks to make the dull the embarrassment which also helps so that no one can remember how bad you really are. Our Chinese New Year session was during the day so no one was particularly drunk and I can’t think of anyone who couldn’t sing. We did have some absolute standouts though Nora and Gilbert’s my ‘My Heart Will go on’, Gilbert's Chinese rap, Annie multiple Britney songs, Mario – Polka face (too bad they didn’t have telephone!), Sushant and Mauricio - Backstreet Boys and there were all these Chinese songs I didn’t know but I am sure they sounded exactly like the original (Irene, Lele, Michelle & Lan).

We wrapped things up around 8pm because lots of us had some work to do and some people had to head back to Cergy. I headed back to my place for my first night in my new home. I am so happy to be here and can’t wait to get out and explore Paris and hopefully (and most importantly) improve my French!