day #258 - done

 

So, if the title and the photo doesn't help you - yeah, I'm done. The last month has been very, very hectic, squeezing in a trip to Montpellier (which is really cool, has lots of student dive bars and lots of excellent weather, and is generally the cooliest) and Paris (which is classic and gave us lots of lovely warm Spring weather to boot) while trying - and failing - to revise for my Finals and pack up all my crap in anticipation of heading home.

I am now procrastinating from packing, which I like even less than I like revising. France has given me one final slap in the face by plonking a bank holiday down on the day before I leave, which means that if I don't have everything I need now, I won't be able to get it until I head back to the UK. Thanks, France.

I should probably write some kind of What I've Learned thing, or, What Really Happens On Your Year Abroad, but I am lazy and one thing I Have Learned is that I'm not even that good at years abroad anyway. Generally, the whole year has made me feel like I'm going crazy - the pendulum is always swinging, and there are constant shifts reminding you that no, you haven't quite got it all sorted, and no, you'll probably not manage to get the hang of it in the short 9-12 months you'll spend in a foreign country. I wish I could say, "But I learned to deal with the stress and come to terms with the fact it was all out of my control," but I have not, and the whole experience has, at times, been incredibly frustrating, scary, and generally made me feel like a huge ball of existentialist melancholy, rather than a human being who was just born in a different place. But I kind of got used to it, started anticipating having the rug pulled from under my feet, and then when it does, the world kind of makes sense, in a weird way.

I have dealt with rude administration staff who simply shrug and say, "Ce n'est pas possible," when you ask for help, weird flatmates, incompetent administration staff who lose your vital paperwork and then blame you, teachers who kick you out of classes for being international, teachers who wish they could kick you out (and spend the whole year ignoring you and shooting you doubtful glances), exams I knew I was going to fail, lectures I didn't understand, French classmates regarding me as some kind of leper because I had a funny accent, loneliness (yes, I said it), trying to deal with home university paperwork from a distance, etc, etc, etc. You can understand why me walking out of the university campus on the day of my final exam in one piece feels like enough of a triumph. I don't care if I passed my exams. I literally don't care. Because this whole year has felt like one massive obstacle, and even if I mess up the landing, I didn't, you know, die, or starve, or wander into oncoming traffic.

And I'm still sad that I'm leaving. There's a sense that there are a million and one things left to do on my list, and they were all plans made with new-found friends who I am leaving behind. It's definitely the things outside of the university which are central to your year abroad, and yeah, your classes fall by the wayside, because they have to, or else you would go utterly insane. I will miss this weird town. It is weird. So weird. But I will miss it. 

I scoffed when people told me, "You'll think all your old friends are so boring when you go back," because that's dumb - but I kind of get it now. Because I've just spent this huge chunk of time stumbling around in this weird French dream-haze, encountering obstacles at every turn, and they got to sit comfortably at home with their friends and their families and watch British TV and drink their tea with milk in and eat proper oven chips. You sort of teach yourself to stop wanting that, because you have to. You switch off, because homesickness isn't really an option. You can't have it, and after a while, you accept that you can't have it, and you don't want it anymore. It's hard to put into words, really, but going back will be odd. It will be odd to be so comfortable again and I think reverse culture shock is probably definitely a thing.

Don't get me wrong, I am so excited about going home. But it will be weird. It will take a few days to adjust. I've been home twice in 9 months, for 2 weeks in total. I found a £1 coin on the floor the other day and it took a while to register what it was. You know how it is.

I will miss the opportunity for visiting friends in far-flung places, and I will miss the opportunity to practice my French with natives without leaving my front door, and I definitely miss the patisseries and the €4 wine. I will miss the weather, which is at least 4° warmer than Edinburgh at any given moment. I will miss trying to pretend that I am from Normandy, and the lovely feeling when someone asks, "Wait, you're French though, aren't you?". I will miss my rouennais friends, who are all very weird, and very lovely, and very generous. I will miss cheap public transport, being so close to Paris, trying out new bars and coffee houses just because, French stereotypes, the excellent cheese, the Sunday markets, and my weird new little city. I will miss 'being an Erasmus'. I will miss the fact that the world kind of feels like my oyster.
I will not miss google.fr. That is something I will not miss. Also, French Netflix. It's not great. And thank God I'm out of that awful university. But hey ho. I didn't do too badly, after all.

I was walking near the train station, and I was stopped by a guy who asked for directions in French with a foreign accent. It turns out he was American, and staying in Rouen for a week to decide if he wanted to spend his year abroad here. Kind of a weird full circle.

I have to go pack now. I'm moving out of my house tomorrow and so far all my belongings are strewn across my floor and I have posters to pull down and empty wine bottles-turned-candleholders to throw out and laundry to do. I imagine this may be the last post I do on this blog. How weird !
Hope this wasn't too wanky for a final post.

Josie
x

day #118 - guess who's back

OOPS I did that thing where I didn't post for a month (ha ha ha, hee hee hee, ho ho ho)
Do not blame me; simply blame the magic of Christmas/exam season/the unnecessarily unorganised nature of the French education system. Here is a photo of me in a festive hat from this festive season so that you are all fully aware that I am not lying:

of course i'm joking, haha. this is me in 2012.

However, as I have not posted since December 4th, I'm sure there's a couple of things I can update you on: (This is a long post, I'm afraid)

1. La Fête des Lumières
My two favourite things in life (after Gilmore Girls, fresh bed sheets and, you know, family and friends) are sparkly lights and alcoholic drinks. Therefore Lyon from the 5th December to the 8th (that's somewhere around day #90ish, if I remember rightly) was a kind of Josie dreamland where there are literally lights everywhere and plenty of makeshift stalls hawking mulled wine and lots of people wearing light-up headbands.

According to Wikipedia, "the Fête des Lumières is a time when France expresses gratitude toward Mary, mother of Jesus on December 8 of each year. This uniquely Lyonnaise tradition dictates that every house place candles along the outsides of all the windows to produce a spectacular effect throughout the streets. With over 4 million tourists coming to Lyon for this event, the festival is probably one of the three biggest festive gatherings in the world in terms of attendance (after the Rio Carnival and Oktoberfest in Munich)."

I headed down on a TGV (the French high-speed train service. Well, it was suppose to be high-speed. It ended up being 4 hours later than intended) to Lyon, and got given a complementary lunch by SNCF, the train operator, because the train was late and they clearly felt guilty. When I finally arrived, I got to spend the entire weekend with my pals Nel and Kate, who are both studying French with me up in Edinburgh and who are both now scattered across France too! The whole weekend was cracking and involved plenty of alcohol and complaining about the bitter cold and wandering around Lyon at night.
Lyon is lovely, by the way, you should visit.

still not clear whether this animatronic dragon featuring two men in white jumpsuits on its back playing guitar and synth was part of the festival or not

2. The terrible French assessment season.
Imagine that you are a student who has, through no fault of their own, been forced into taking 6 subjects. Imagine that each of these subjects takes up a minimum of 2 hours a week, but most of them take up 3 hours. Then imagine that all of these subjects require you to do three pieces of assessment in the months of November and December. Mm, doesn't that make you feel cosy?
Then imagine that they also have January exams to put the cherry on top of a wonderful academic semester. Then imagine that they don't release the exam dates until after everyone has left to go back to their own home countries, and that there are 4 exams scheduled for the same time.
These are all things which have happened to me over the past few months. I'm *this* close to banging my head solidly against my lovely French wooden flooring.

3. I bought a space heater.
€14 off amazon.fr. I would just continue to use the space heater from the bathroom, but I think my housemates have noticed and if I don't put it back soon, I'll never be able to put it back.

4. My housemate's cat stopped loving me over the Christmas break.
Pretty self-explanatory. She's called Desperado (yes, after the beer) and we call her Desper or Despet or something - it's one of those French words that I'm not 100% sure on so I tend to mumble the last bit on purpose.

5. I went on a little jaunt to Paris.
I almost forgot this one! Just before the Christmas break, it was my good friend Fede's birthday, so I headed out into Paris a day earlier than I would have done for my flight home and we spent a day stomping around the capital city, seeking out tourist attractions. Unfortunately, l'Orangerie was closed, but we found Galeries Lafayette in all its Christmassy glory, saw the Eiffel Tower from a distance and spotted that bridge with all the padlocks that has had to be boarded up because it's so heavy the council think it's going to fall into the Seine.

the christmas ceiling at galeries lafayette, a huge shopping centre in paris

 

 

the padlocks have spread down the sides of the river now

It's the first chance I've had to see the kind of tourist version of Paris that most people have seen; whenever I've visited in the past, we have seen maybe one or two monuments and then driven (yes! Driven!) away. This time, I had to buy a carnet of tickets for the Metro and use my actual legs to get places.

jardin des tuileries shot, feat. fede's head

The day was rounded off nicely because I stayed overnight with my friend from Edinburgh, Meg, where we stayed up late nattering as we are wont to do (however, note to self: staying up drinking until 3am is not a good idea when you have to get up at 8.30am for your flight). Not only that, but my old flatmate from Edinburgh was also in town! We had grand plans to get a nice meal, ended up missing all the restaurant hours, and ordered slightly drunk kebabs in Frenglish instead. What can I say? You can take the girls out of the UK...

This has been quite an Edinburgh-centric post, really, but it is so wonderful meeting up with old friends in new places. One of my new year's resolutions is to visit as many people as I can in as many wonderful places as I can; me and Eleri sat down yesterday and wrote a list of Things To Do Before We Go.

can you spot the eiffel tower?

There's plenty of things left to cram in to the next 4-and-a-bit months: Strasbourg, Montpellier, Omaha beach, Le Havre, more Paris, my 21st birthday, Toulouse, Grenoble, Giverny, Versailles, possibly trips abroad to Belgium, Italy, Germany and Scandinavia, maybe Bordeaux and Champagne too! Thank you to the ERSAMUS gods for your generous grants. We salute you!

Anyway, before all of that, I have to pass my January exams, which isn't looking likely, so, wish me luck and tell me to stop procrastinating!

Gros bis,
Josie
x

day #87 - feeling festive

After a cheeky month-long hiatus, I'm reviving my blog. You can't really blame me, because nothing much worth documenting has actually happened. I've spent a couple of weekends doing things like wine and cheese tasting (very French), something called a 'Semaine des Zazimuts' which seemed to largely involve taking over the town hall and blasting music and handing out free condoms (also very French), and trying to wrap my head around the mere concept of midterm assessment, which is something evil and should immediately be burned out of public conscience. I also managed to head out to the Opéra, where we watched a Charlie Chaplin film (Les temps modernes, or Modern Times) which was accompanied by a proper orchestra. It was very cool.

But why should the blog crank back into action now? After all this time we've spent apart? The title is a little clue.
There's something in the air. It's the tinsel strung up in shop windows, it's the market taking over the square outside the Notre Dame, it's the mulled wine filling up my belly. It's Christmas.

a christmassy chocolate shop on the rue du gros horloge

 And I'm a total sucker for Christmas. It's not just the fact that Jesus was born - which, let me be clear, is pretty cool, and I've heard he did a lot of really good things with it - but it's the romance and the schmaltz that seems to appear the moment that the fairy lights switch on. There surely has to be a reason that the holiday season coincides with, to quote Doctor Who, the point at which we're "halfway out of the dark"? Just as the weather begins tumbling down to freezing point and the days start turning to night at two o'clock in the afternoon, we start switching on the Christmas lights and ice skating and buying each other presents and putting up trees. You get to give up on life for a week or two if you're lucky, and go home to your families and your loved ones. You get to sit on the sofa and drink slightly too much alcohol and eat slightly too much food and complain about how old we're all getting. I might be sentimental, but it really does make it the most wonderful time of the year.

the two-tiered carousel outside the cathedral

The only problem with Christmas in France seems to be that nobody seems to think it's Christmas in France yet. I know for a fact that the Edinburgh German market popped up around the 21st November, a full week before Rouen's Christmas offerings. And as for the Christmas decorations, then it's go hard or go home, my friends - some of my neighbours have bedazzled their houses to the points of eye-watering gaudiness. However, the village council has offered up this:

That, my friends, is the third and final Christmas light in my cosy little town. There are two others: A banner that says JOYEUSES FETES and a tree that they've strung some fairy lights across. It's a nice thought, I suppose. The other amusing thing is that as I got off the bus last night, having done a bit of shopping and run a few errands (and, of course, indulged in a glass of mulled wine at the market, duh), I saw a dude dressed as Santa Claus crossing the road right under that Christmas light. He had the beard on and everything.
A bit of Yuletide magic for you.

The Christmas market itself is quite sweet and deceptively expansive - it seems to stretch not only across from the Vieux Marché to the square in front of the Notre Dame, but there are also stalls sprawling all the way up to the town hall and I've even spotted the little wooden garden shed-type huts selling croustillons all the way down to the Seine. The vendors are very nice, and having them attempt to speak English while we try to convince them that actually yes, we speak French, is jolly good ERASMUS fun. The best bit about it, however, has to be the mulled wine - at €2 a cup (maybe €2,50 at a stretch), it's much more fun than the £5 mugs back in the UK. Heh, heh, heh. The British are such suckers.

couple of christmassy stalls outside the cathedral

Now I'm counting down the days until I can throw myself headfirst into the festive season. It's a little under two weeks before I head back to the UK, but before then I'm spending this weekend in Lyon for the Fête des Lumières with some buddies from Edinburgh who are also spending their ERASMUS years in France. I'm also attending a Christmassy pot-luck (a follow-on from a lovely Thanksgiving pot-luck spent with some of my anglophone friends), a birthday party, and there's still a visit to Paris on the cards for some Christmas markets and hopefully a few glasses of cheap wine before I go back to the country where I pay £7 a bottle. I'm also almost out of exam season now - only one presentation, one exam and one essay hand-in to go. Then I get to go home and start cramming for my January finals. Lucky me.

All in all, there's light at the end of this gross, cold, exam-filled tunnel, and I hope that you're enjoying the Christmassy countdown wherever you are. I will definitely be writing a little post about the Fête des Lumières, so watch out for that!

Joyeuses fêtes,
Josie
x

Day #31 – Calm down, France

I have long regarded France as a wonky version of England. There's a reason that, while students of Asian Studies have entire lessons on their timetables devoted to dealing with culture shock, the European students are merrily sent on their way with a cheery thumbs up and maybe some comments about bringing back cheap wine and salad dressing (God, do my family love French salad dressing)

And, I mean, yeah, France is basically Britain, isn't it? The weather is just as unpredictable, there are still things like hospitals and cars and hairdressers, and the French use more Englishisms in their everyday speech then they would like to admit (see: 'cool', 'alright', 'let's go', 'what?', 'dead', all swear words). Sometimes I swear I've just moved to Keighley, or Leith, except a sort of dystopian version where everybody speaks French and eats a wide variety of cheeses. But there are some definite differences that remind me that I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore.

1. thE WEATHER

WHAT THE HECK, FRANCE. IT IS THE 10TH OCTOBER AND THERE IS SUN IN MY EYES. SUN. STREAMING. I'M SO SWEATY. YOU TAKE YOUR HIGHS OF 19°C AND YOU CAN SHOVE IT UP YOUR- although, speaking of that, I was caught in what can only be described as an apocalyptic downpour yesterday and I had to hide in Lidl for half an hour. (I bought a massive tin of chili con carne and a bar of chocolate; it was a successful trip). I have also had evenings where I've been so cold I've had to wrap up under my duvet in two jumpers with the laptop charger clutched between my hands because it's the only warm thing in the house. Go figure.

LIAR

2. French people do smoke as much as we think they do...

...but they hate when you point it out. They get all huffy and defensive and say stuff like, “English people smoke too!” Like, yah pal, the English smoke, but the French smoke. They smoke like chimneys. They chew on the ends of those e-cigarettes at bars and in cafés, then switch to a regular clope the second they step outside. They have smoke pouring out of their noses even when there is no cigarette in sight. That's how evolved they are.

3. Some people are just walking clichés, and I'm at peace with that.
Yes, boy in a green velvet blazer eating a baguette in the campus cafeteria. Yes, French housemate who somehow smokes while playing the trumpet in the conservatory. Yes, elderly woman carefully cutting her own brie to enjoy with her wine at a table on the pavement on a sunny market day. You guys do you.

4. Nobody drinks proper milk.
For a country where dairy products seem to make up about 80% of everyone's diet, France cannot make milk for neither love nor money. Firstly, everyone seems to ingest UHT milk, which creeps me out and should creep you out too. The second problem is that the French have different levels of milk. Full-fat milk. Baby milk. That's fine. Then there's vitamin milk. Creamed milk. Aisles and aisles of branded milk. And none of it goes in the fridge?
And I'm the weird one for wanting to put it in my tea.

nothing to do with milk, really, but quite nice

5. French TV sucks
Literally nobody watches French TV, apart from my mate Safiya, who found the French equivalent of 'Take Me Out' (for all those keen beans, the direct translation of 'Seduis-moi si tu peux' is actually 'Seduce Me If You Can'), but she's English and therefore does not count. And also...

6. The French will dub everything.

You know how sometimes artsy people will say things like, “Yah, well, I prefer to watch old films with subtitles rather than dubbing, because otherwise it can really lose a certain je ne sais quoi in the audio?” That's me now. I have become one of those people. 

I went to go see '22 Jump Street'. It was dubbed. 'Friends' is dubbed. 'How I Met Your Mother' is dubbed. The last straw came for me when we watched the 1989 American film 'Dangerous Liaisons' in my Literature and Cinema course. It is an English-language film. It was dubbed in French. And the teacher put the English subtitles on the bottom. At that point my brain turned into sand and I launched myself into space.

I have more things to say about France, but I'm going to leave it at that, because even talking about the dubbing in 'Dangerous Liaisons' has made me so angry I've had to put my panini down. And that's very angry.

Next time: “Can you make friends in French?” (Answer: No. God, I'm lonely.)

Josie

P.S. Hi Mum, me again, that last line was a funny joke. I have at least four friends.

day #25 - settling in

Yo yo,

This is my first blog post! That's right, I'm 25 days in, and I'm settled/bored/desperate enough to start a blog. As opposed as I was initially to the idea of putting yet another ERASMUS blog out into the universe (there truly are bajillions floating around the internet - just look at thirdyearabroad, it's full of idiots like me), and as much as I loathe attention (ahem), I've actually seen some very cute blogs from some of my friends which have been really fun to read and have therefore inspired me greatly. So now I'm ready. Ready to embark on a journey.

Alors, bonjour from France. I'm currently living in Rouen, which - according to Wikipedia - is the historic capital of Normandy and is roughly a quarter of the size of Edinburgh, my adopted hometown. As far as I can tell, Rouen is really good for old churches and Joan of Arc memorabilia, and if you wander down the Rue du gros horloge at lunchtime on a Saturday, you will see plenty of Japanese and American tourists dutifully taking photos of the big golden clock (...le gros horloge. The French are very imaginative with their street names.) The pastries here are also excellent, of course, and I have been enjoying them round the clock in the glorious French sunshine (24°c weather in October? Get it together, France)

le gros horloge, a sparkly clock

I arrived here on the 9th September with 3 suitcases after taking 4 train journeys. I was tired and therefore incredibly emotional (think crying-on-the-train-in-front-of-strangers-while-listening-to-the-Disney-Tarzan-soundtrack emotional). My friend Eleri came and met me at Rouen train station, and consistently proved to be a total lifesaver for the next three weeks, where she let me sleep on her clic-clac bed in the living room of her gorgeous apartment - which just happens to be in an old listed building which has its own Wikipedia page, bien sur.

We started trying to organise our classes immediately, which, apparently, was already far too late - I managed to miss all of the introductory lectures and tours. Not that it would have helped at all, of course, because somewhere between the University of Edinburgh and l'Université de Rouen, they managed to write down that we wanted to learn English. Non, non, non. We spent the next two weeks trying to rectify this mistake. 

We did not rectify the mistake. There are still teachers asking us if we want to take English grammar courses. Maybe they will learn.

However, three weeks in,  I have just about managed to form some semblance of a timetable, and there's a heady mix of History of Art, translation and cinema. In fact, if my granddad would call it a "doss subject", I'm probably studying it. 

this will probably be covered in my history of art class

I have managed to get a bus pass, a French SIM card, a young person's railcard, a French bank account (even if they won't let me have the bank card yet, les méchants) and two days ago I even managed to finally move into my own house. It's weird and exciting having my own bedroom again, and I'm sharing an enormous 6-bedroom country house with a Turk, a Russian, and three French people - one of whom is called Francois and is the living embodiment of every cliché I have ever heard. They're very nice. It's actually in a village outside of Rouen and about a half an hour's bus ride away from the campus, but it's not too bad.

I cannot stress how nice it is to have my own space - Eleri was incredibly generous in taking me in, but it was very odd when I guiltily made myself the unhealthiest dinner known to man last night and realised that there was nobody to judge me. So I put more Swiss cheese on it.

I will leave this post for now, because I'm sure nobody really cares. If you would like a more up-to-date, hip way to keep track of the failings of the French administration system, I frequently complain about them on my Twitter. 

I'll probably update again. Later. OK. Babye. Thanks for reading!

Josie

P.S. No Mum, if the title alarmed you, I haven't been counting the days, I used a website.