Au Revoir la France

I think it's a fact of life that you can spend a long time in a place or situation, wishing you were somewhere else, and then as soon as the time comes to leave, you really start to see all the little good things that have been there all the time. I'd never really properly appreciated the beauty of where I live as I felt the mountains and ruralness (rurality?) were like a cage of isolation, but now it's Spring and I've grown to love the countryside, I'm kicking myself for not adjusting sooner. However, I also think that a bit of perspective is needed in these situations, and while I should of course appreciate the feeling of finally feeling settled (nice timing there), I also have to remember that I probably wouldn't be feeling this content at the end, if I'd been content all along. I hate to use clichés that make me sound like I've just rolled off the set of the X factor, but there is no better way to describe my time here than as a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences. And as a result I'm now finding it really hard to articulate how I'm feeling about it all.

So off I go back to a land where water doesn't taste like chlorine, the roads seem frighteningly narrow, and customer service is actually a thing. I think I'll do what I did at the end of my time in Italy and bullet-point the stand-out moments of my time here.

• Standing in front of a class for the first time: obviously I'd stood in front of a class before, but not as a member of staff in a foreign country. From being asked if British men are bad lovers and asked how many times I've met the Queen, to diffusing arguments and trying to create some sort of motivation amongst my pupils to learn English, it was in equal measure both fun and terrifying.
• Taking a class alone for the first time: one of the most traumatic things I've ever done. It was awful. For a long time afterwards, they were my least favourite class. It wasn't until after Christmas that they started to grow up a bit and redeem themselves, and now I'm actually really sad to be leaving them. It's been a pleasure to watch 2F transform from a nightmare group who wouldn't even sit on chairs, let alone speak a word of English, turn into a group who will sit relatively quietly for an hour working, and then perform conversations in actually pretty decent English.
• InterRailing: Oh, generous French school holidays, how I will miss you. Amy and I had an amazing 10 days travelling about- I had my first dip in the Mediterranean, set foot in Switzerland and Germany for the first time, and discovered some beautiful French cities. 
• The Christmas markets: and just Christmas here in general. They do it really well here and the festive mood lasted for months. Performing at the Issenheim Christmas concert was a highlight and made it worth all those late night lesson planning sessions that we were forced to do after spending hours at choir practice.
• Being able to combine my two favourite things in one brilliant job: although I loved both of the schools I worked at, working at the catering college gave me the opportunity to teach about food and hospitality to language students, which suited me so much that I don't think I could've come up with a better job description myself. 

So that's it, the end of the French section of my year abroad. Overall, it's been an enjoyable, if at times frustrating learning curve, and although Alsace has grown on me substantially over time, and it's unfair to compare the different parts of this year as they have all been so vastly different, it is fair to say that I will probably always have a slightly stronger pull towards Italy.

Whoops, I've actually been back home for nearly two weeks already, but haven't found the time to publish this. Today is technically the last day of my contract as an assistant though so it's fitting that this should be my last post "from" France. This isn't however, the end of my blog (sorry). I will very soon be resisting the temptation to spend my wages from this year on lying on a beach in Italy for three months (apparently the university allows this!), and instead invest some of it by spending a month at a language school in the Italian region of Le Marche. I must admit that as much as I have enjoyed teaching, it will be a welcome luxury to walk into a classroom and sit at the desks facing the teacher and absorb information, rather than walk up to the whiteboard worrying that my lesson plan won't be interesting or long enough. So prepare for more rambly blog posts about how much better the tomatoes are in Italy and how much I love the sun...

A presto!

Alice x