Où Sont Les Cours de Français?

In order to help me to improve my French (what's the point of moving to France if you're not going to learn the language...?), Fran has helped me to sign up for French lessons here.

The main French classes are run by an organisation called 'AVF' who are a bit like a PTA/WI style organisation who run activities and events in the local area. We went to sign up a couple of weeks ago and they were really disorganised. They had lots of tables all scattered around with no clear organisation. It took us around 10 minutes just to work out that we had to register with AVF before being able to sign up for classes and other activities, and then another 5 trying to work out which table was the registration table...

We finally got me all signed up for Thursday morning French class, and the lady at the table told us that she'd 'see me next week'.

One week later on a Thursday morning....

Off we go to find French classes! I got up really early and we left around 10 minutes extra to find this class as Fran wasn't sure exactly where it was. We walked about 15 mins to what seemed like a carpark with flats and small businesses around it and wandered up to a few of these buildings/tried doors etc. 

We wandered into a community centre style building, and a elderly daycare centre, and into what turned out to be residential flats, but couldn't find French class...

About 40 mins later, we decided to walk over to the AVF building (tiny little library style building with several 50+ clueless ladies). Fran went in to ask while I pushed the pram around outside (Aurianne was going to sleep). Apparently the conversation went something like this:

Fran: "Hi, I'm here with my au pair [points out of window at me] and we were told French classes started today at xyz building but we can't seem to find it."

Lady 1: "Oooh, french class? I don't know. Marie-Antoinette do you know about French class?"
Lady 2: "Hmm, no Marie-Christine (they're all called 'Marie-something', says Fran), I don't know about French classes. Perhaps Marie-Clare knows?"

Lady 3: "I don't know Marie-Christine or Marie-Antoinette, perhaps there's some paper somewhere that has some kind of useful information on i?"
*queue everyone blindly looking at bits of paper*
Lady 2: "Ah, no Marie Clare, I just can't find anything about it anywhere"
Fran: "Perhaps there's a phone number for the French teacher? Or perhaps you could just send me/cate an email when you find out?"
Lady 1: "Oh, no. I don't think we have a number. Marie-Antoinette, do you know about a number for a French teacher?"

... and on it went...

Fran managed to get pretty much no information out of them, but they did find out that classes were due to start the first week of October, so that was something at least!

While we were there Fran also asked if they would put up a notice on their website about an afternoon for au pairs to meet as I've yet to meet any. They were insistent that I would meet au pairs at French class and at all the social activities AVF runs which, by the way, I really had to come to, "here's another useless bit of paper which tells you what we've got going on, and on which days, but with absolutely no information about times or locations! If you wanted to find out more, there's no contact or website information either, so you'll just have to guess!" (I've been given 3 of these so far).

Fran tried to explain that as most of the social activities were likely held in the evenings, or run into school pick up/drop off times, that most au pairs would be working and therefore unable to attend. She also explained the logic that if you have 3 different French classes, and 6 au pairs, the chance that all of them would ever actually meet is quite unlikely as they may not all go to the same ones... They didn't understand this either, obviously.

A couple of days later, I had a phone call on my french phone from one of the ladies from AVF (Monique, I believe). I think she was trying to tell me about what day French classes started, and that they were with someone called Colette, however I'm not sure, as this phone call was all in French. I kept asking her if she could please speak a little slower, but she just kept speaking at the same speed, but a little louder/clearer instead. 

Also, in my opinion, it's a little stupid to call people in French to give them vital information about a French class that they were probably attending because they didn't understand French... No? Just me?