MePipe

Students are often portrayed as living on a shoe-string budget of a few pounds a week. Not true. Everyone I know seems to have a decent amount of money to spend, no we're not all private school kids; at least I'm not. I've been keeping a close eye on my finances to see where the money is going and it's an interesting thing to look at. Let's take this week for example: I've scheduled £70 as my budget for this week - notice it's only Thursday at the moment. I went for a shop at Sainsbury's this week - total spend £34.33. Almost half of my budget - gone. The theory being that making food at home is cheaper than eating out - which is true. However this week I also got a take-away which is unusual for me (I've probably only had four the whole time I've been here) which cost me £10.65 as that was the minimum for delivery. Altogether that's almost £45 spent on food. We need entertaining too - and this week I've bought 4 DVDs online at a

So it's just four weeks until I go out to Disneyland Paris for 17 days to be a Cast Member. It's very exciting at the moment as I just got my contact and info pack through the post. There are two copies of the contract - all in French, detailing all the legal stuff, incl. your pay and your role amongst things like Social Security and health benefits. You send one back to the office. You also get two copies of the housing contract which gives you basic details such as the names, how much rent you have to pay and what is and isn't provided. You send one back to the office and keep the other. You also have to send a copy of some ID back too. Apart from that there's a welcome letter detailing your first steps - eg. go to the Fantasia building before 6pm on day zero, and day one is traditions at 8.45am at the Disney University (aka Hotel Cheyenne). There's also a map, a disability leaflet, a travel expenses form, a contacts form, and a social security/tax detai