Tout achèvement marque un nouveau départ
Every end is a new beginning
In three days' time I will be making a somewhat stressful journey on the metro to Orly Airport, with a very large, very heavy suitcase and no key in my pocket to the little flat on the fifth floor of a beautiful Parisian building in the 15th arrondissement. Quite sad when you put it like that, but I'm not very sad to be going!
I've spent the best part of four months living in Paris, the capital city of France - not my home country, or anything like it. This is the first time I've lived in a different country, the first time I've lived away from home without living with a group of my best girlfriends and the first time I've lived in a huge city (I wasn't living in the city at York so I'm not counting it!). I'm a country girl, I live in a little village with a lot of green spaces and a lot of mud and where leaving the house in wellies doesn't mean you're off to a festival. So coming to live in a full on city with its own underground railway system and traffic that never stops has been a bizarre and exciting experience for me!
I came here to improve my French language skills, and I feel pretty comfortable saying I've achieved that. I'm still not fluent, but I no longer freak out when someone speaks to me in French and I can usually form some sort of reply now - I'd say that's a pretty big achievement considering in my oral exam at the end of uni last year, I was struggling to remember the French for 'try'! My accent has improved too - I've had a man in a pharmacy tell me I sound French and an elderly couple asked me for directions and didn't bat an eyelid at my response (I, on the other hand, did a bit of a happy dance when they turned around!). I also had an oral exam yesterday for a sociology module I didn't understand, and my mark was 15/20, so I'm pretty pleased with myself!
I'm not going to dwell on the attacks back in November, as that was an exceptional event and it was something that couldn't be helped. But I do want to mention some of the things that have not been so great whilst I've been here, because if anyone reading my blog is going on a year abroad in the future, I want them to see the two sides to mine.
I came here with three friends from my university back in England, which I was and still am really happy about. The only problem is that we chose to do all the same modules and, as much as I was glad to have them in my classes so I wasn't alone, it did hold us back from talking to the French students in those classes. We stuck together, so we weren't approachable and we didn't do any approaching! I'm not saying we didn't speak to any French people at all - that is not the case! - but we could have spoken a lot more French if we'd split up a little. So, a piece of advice for any future year abroaders: don't stick to what you know, throw yourself in the deep end, ignore what you were taught as a child and DO speak to strangers!
Another little error I made was phoning home or facetiming my family when I felt homesick. First of all, how awful for my parents to have me on the phone crying and saying I want to come home - they can't let me come home because that would be a bad decision, but they don't want to sit there and do nothing while I'm feeling like that. But also, its not good for me to be on the phone to people I miss when that feeling is at it's worst! I managed a few times to make the right decision and take myself out of the flat and for a walk in the park or to some shops and that was the best thing I could have done, but I didn't do it every time and that's where I failed. If you're feeling homesick you need to distract yourself, not give in, and I cannot emphasise that enough!
But enough of the negativity! I have got what I came for from Paris - improved language skills - and now its time to move on. On Monday I'm off to Santiago de Compostela for the second leg of my year abroad and I could not be more excited! I'm going to do things differently there - I'm going to live with new people and step out of my comfort zone, I'm going to speak to Spanish people and I'm going to try really hard not to dwell on missing home.
Watch this space!
Bean xx
