Communication bites!

I have been making preparations to go to graduate school in Geneva... things have been working out... well, sort of. There have been so many instances of miscommunication, it is really getting on my nerves. I am going to be learning Master's degree level material in French. I can speak, read and write extensively in French but I still find it hard to understand different accents and to discern the language when it is spoken at a fast rate. I'm a little bit worried that I might be lost in translation the whole time... that I might be the student in class who is always apologizing and answering questions with "Répétez votre question s'il vous plaît"... there is certainly a difference between learning a language within the socio-cultural milieu and learning the language from a distance. I hope I am making the right decision to study in Geneva.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should just stay where I am, to take a somewhat easier way out. I have made up my mind about Geneva though so I am going to stick to the plan. It takes the Swiss embassy a minimum of eight weeks to process a permit... wth? Why? Upon that, the application requires more that 15 different supporting documents. These are the times when I wish we lived in a world without national boundaries and limitations. Okay, so I am whining like a lazy bum... hehe...

blasted day : (

I am just getting accustomed to this whole blogging experience. This is like a diary for me, a place where I can leave my thoughts and revisit them later (and wonder what the hell I was thinking when I wrote them down!)... Anyway, I have been having quite the time reconciling the differences between three or four different places I live and school in. My family lives in Nigeria (we sort of live all over the place, I just finished four years of college in the US and in Canada (two years in the US and the other two in Quebec). I am currently heading to Switzerland (Geneva to be precise) to further my education. I have had an interesting experience so far, I wonder what awaits me in Geneva!

Currently, I am dealing with the difficulty in communication, lack of organization and laxity of things in Switzerland and poor customer service, it's really annoying! My application process to a school there went well but after that, things have been rather hectic and unclear! Apparently, they need original copies of my secondary school transcript (I went to secondary school in Nigeria), I only have photocopies of the transcript and my secondary school requires my personal collection of the original document. Why in the world aren't they satisfied with stamped photocopies??? It will cost me over $2000 to travel to Nigeria to get my transcript and that in my opinion is too much!!! They also asked for a bunch of other random things that I have no idea how to access before the deadline... this is poop!!! I wish communication was not so difficult...arrrrrghhhhhh!!!