Lifescouts, curso de francês na Inglaterra, e etc.

Então, em resposta ao post do Levi, dono deste blog, aderi ao Lifescouts. 

Confesso que eu não tinha uma puta de uma ideia do que se tratava até ontem à noite (quando eu abri o post dele) e, bom, achei uma ótima ideia. E como nada se cria, tudo se copia, aqui estou! (Levi, espero que você não se importe de eu ter colado sua ideia!)

Bom, antes de mais nada, sintetizando o assunto, Lifescouts é uma brincadeirinha em que blogueiros, vlogueiros e afins compartilham histórias relacionadas a um mesmo assunto (determinado por um badge - virtual ou real) na rede. Esses badges estão disponíveis virtualmente pelo tumblr, ou fisicamente por essa lojinha. Pra adquirir um real badge, você obviamente terá que desembolsar algumas rainhas. Eu sou pobre e acho desnecessário, so virtual badge it is. 

Aqui nesse post o Levi também explicou sobre esse esquema, sobre como ele descobriu e etc... vale a pena dar uma conferida!

Bom, eu começarei gloriosamente esta nova tag com o mesmo badge com que ele a começou no blog dele: French language. Primeiro porque serve de resposta, segundo porque eu fui ao início dos badges no site do Lifescouts e aparentemente este é o primeiro tema com que eu realmente posso contar uma história legal, e terceiro - e o mais conveniente - eu realmente tenho um update sobre o CSF relacionado a francês!

Agora, um pequeno adendo aos leitores de plantão: como já dito pelo Levi, essa é uma tag internacional, logo eu devo escrever a história em inglês. Foi mal aí quem não é muito bom na língua :( talvez eu traduza depois, mas não é promessa, ein!

So hey ho, lets go?

French Language Badge

First of all, I don't speak French. The only sentences I know in this language are these:

Salut, je m'appelle Rayra. Je suis brésilien. Je suis 22 ans. Je ne parle pas francais.

Je suis une femme, je ne suis pas un homme. Je suis grand, je ne suis pas petit.

Lol, as you guys can see, I'm not even close to know something really useful in French! All I know (this tiny bit written above) I learnt on livemocha.com, on a desperate attempt to become fluent one day. Well, I didn't achieve this goal yet, unfortunately. 

But anyway, you guys may ask "why in the hell are you writing about French language if you don't even speak it?!". Well, dearies, this I can answer! 

As some of y'all might know, I am a medical student here in Brazil. And as some of y'all might also know, there is this quite famous institution called "Doctors Without Borders", that send volunteer doctors to needy countries. This non-governmental organization was created in France (the original name is Médecins Sans Frontières), and they gather doctors from all over the world to help people, since, of course, the doctors have some prerequisites, as fluency in another languages (as English and French), time of graduation, availability to spend at least 6 months away from your native country, etc. I don't remember all the terms now, but that's some of them. 

Well, as your might have deduced from this previous statement of mine, I want to be a doctor without border one day. And for that, I need to learn French! Ok that the lack of fluency isn't an exclusion criterion, but, since most of the needy countries at Central America or Africa speak French as alternative language, this knowledge is very much appreciated when you are applying to be a DWB. 

So the plan was to start a French course as soon as I'm accepted in some program of residency (the medical specialisation), because at least in theory I'll have enough money to do so by then. But with this SWB perspective, I thought it would be awesome if I could just attend to a French course during the year of the exchange. Having this in mind, and knowing that some Universities allow students to attend to alternative classes outside their main course, I sent an e-mail to the Uni of Salford (via dear Anna) asking if this would be possible. The e-mail was this, below:

Dear Anna, 

I was wondering if is it possible for me to attend to extra modules, besides those from my course/year (the 3rd year of Human Biology and Infectious diseases). I am truly interested in French or Photography classes, but I'm not sure if I can attend to them (if, of course, there is space on my academic schedule). 

Hope to hear from you soon,

Regards,

Her answer came 2 days later, saying that my ask was not exactly possible, but giving me some alternatives for it. Here's the reply:

Dear Rayra,

Thank you for your message below. 

With regard to your query around French and Photography classes, I am afraid that we cannot place you in a course for these as it wouldn’t be fair to other students who are undertaking these modules on a full time degree basis, to just drop you in and out of modules if you have spare time on the course you are following in Human Biology and Infectious Diseases. This would be too disrupting for the main cohort of students.

However when you arrive here you will be given an induction around student life and one of your options would be to contact the student life officers when you arrive and they can introduce you to the student union. The student union run lots of clubs and whereas I am unsure of the listing myself a colleague in student life informs me that they will have lots of different groups that you could join in such as photography, languages, travel etc. So my advice here would be to wait and see when you arrive, what free time you may have imbetween lectures for your chosen course and join in anything that fits around this.

I hope this answers your query.

Kind regards

So now all my hopes lay on Students Union and these clubs... maybe, who knows, I can start my DWB process while in England! Yay!

Well, guess this is enough for this badge, right?

I'll keep you informed about more updates about my exchange, mates!

xxx