I'm Back!

You can breathe a sigh of relief, your lives are once again complete now that you have my blog back in your weekly routine. Ok, I exaggerate. But I am back and if you've stuck around this far, then welcome back, and thank you for taking an interest in what I'm up to once again :)

Almost two weeks ago, I embarked on the journey to my placement in France which will make up the main chunk of my year abroad. I am located in a little town in southern Alsace to be precise, not far from the German and Swiss borders, which will be my home for the next 7 months. I thought that I wouldn't mind being rural, that I'd get used to being in a little authentic French village. I'm sure I will eventually, but for now it's a bit of a shock having a serious lack of shops/ buses/ train station/ people around. This video portrays it perfectly. We even have sheep.

I should really explain why, 10 days in, I'm only just now producing my first blog post. First of all, I wanted to spare you all the horror of reading something that I'd written in a mess of culture shock and one too many remedial croissants. Anything I wrote while feeling a mixture of flaky pastry-induced happiness crossed with stress-induced annoyance at my school/ town/ toothpaste bottle would've been a terrifying thing to behold, and ruining your day is not something I wish to do! The second reason is quite simply that I have not had the time. Strangely enough, moving abroad does not just involve booking a flight and checking that your EHIC card is in date, and to my horror I have had to set up a bank account, apply for a social security number, buy a French SIM, set up an internet connection, sign a mountain of paperwork, plan lessons, and settle into a new apartment, all while starting a new job which requires me to teach a bunch of often reluctant teenagers on a daily basis. Feeling sorry for me yet? Don't worry, I'm actually having a really great time and have met lots of lovely people, spoken lots of French and eaten many a croissant. Culture shock has surprisingly been more of an issue here than in Italy and I feel like I have very much fallen down the rabbit hole, but at least here I have a fairly consistent routine to settle into and plenty of English speakers around to make sure I don't actually forget how to speak my own language again (in my first week at home after Italy, I said "grazie" to the self-service checkout at Tesco...). My apartment is lovely and my room is at least twice the size of my one in Bath, although this does mean that after unpacking all 20.1kg of my stuff (shoutout to easyJet for letting me on the plane with extra luggage free of charge!) I have many walls to fill. So if anybody would like to send me postcards/ random photos to stick up, please do!

So what am I actually doing here I hear you cry? Why subject myself to the torture of teaching classes of 15 year-olds on my own and living a significant bus journey away from the closest train station and shopping centre? Well, unlike the majority of year abroaders, I decided not to do a university exchange. When the time came to make a decision about my year abroad, it really didn't appeal to me and I knew that being the perfect description of an introvert, I would end up in a bit of a bubble, probably only making friends with other English speakers and being limited by a student loan as to how much tiramisu and croissants I could buy. And this way, I can dodge exams for the next 1.5 years. Winning.

My first week here was a blur of settling into French life, meeting teachers and introducing myself to classes. I am working in two lycees (the equivalent of British school years 11-13), one of which is a general secondary school in which they mainly do science courses, the other is a professional school in which they offer courses in hotel management and catering amongst other things. Introducing myself consisted of me standing in front of fascinated teenagers and being bombarded by questions. Some of them were quite imaginative to say the least. I was asked "Who's your favourite member of One Direction? Why do British women drink so much? and Is it true that British men are bad lovers?" I don't know whether to laugh or cry about what might come my way next...

I realised what the point of the weird pre-toasted bread they sell here is for. It doesn't go bad because it's pretty bad already so it's good for keeping at the back of the cupboard for the Sundays (and lunchtimes, and Mondays, and sometimes Tuesdays) when the shops are closed and you've forgotten to stock up on the proper stuff. There is no such thing here as popping to the shops at lunchtime, and everything from taking the bus to a trip to the corner shop has to be pre-planned. I think I would be in a pickle by now if it wasn't for the plentiful supply of people here in the same situation as me. In our house we have English, Welsh and Canadian assistants, with the French landlord and lady living downstairs, and at my training day in Strasbourg on Wednesday I was fortunate enough to meet plenty of others assistants placed in the neighbouring towns who are from as far away as America and Canada, and from as close as 15 minutes away from home!

Strasbourg is a fantastic and beautiful city, and although I haven't had a chance to take any photos yet, I have a feeling I shall be spending a good amount of time there and we all know that I go a bit over the top when there is a photo opportunity (the result of three months in Italy was about 850 photos...) so I can assure you that there will be photographic evidence of my adventures soon!

I will leave it there for now because I need to go and fill in some more forms (I think France are single-handedly destroying the world's rainforests with the amount of paperwork they demand for the simplest of tasks), but I will be back with another post very soon and I should have lots of stuff to write about because I start work at my second school this week, and then I'm off interailling during the October Toussaint holiday! Yes you read that right, a two week holiday after just 2.5 weeks of work. Maybe the French administration system isn't so bad after all.

A bientôt!