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 #217 - hey there, mr blue!

Alternative title: Here Comes The Sun or Help It's Sunny And There's Not Much Longer To Go
 
After a fairly abysmal March (save for the wonderful week I had in my last blog post, where I was bragging about the warm weather - is it possible I got myself bad karma for being too smug?), the sunshine is finally back in my life again, and I couldn't be happier.

jardin des plantes, the first sunny day

It sure has been a long, cold, lonely winter. I feel like the winter in France has felt considerably longer than it ever did in England or Scotland, and I think most of that is due to France's café culture - a lot of little cafés and brasseries in France are not made to be sat in, and rely far more on the warmer weather, when they can get plenty of punters to sit out on the pavement outside with a glass of white wine and a cigarette. It's also really, really difficult to drag yourself out of bed to go to classes which are led in awkward, complicated French, the teachers are becoming increasingly strict as exam season approaches, and it's still dark outside.

Of course, now it's still difficult to drag myself to class, but at least that's because it's much easier to skip class altogether, and, say, go and eat sushi in one of the public gardens in Rouen, or run away to the beach on Cabourg for a day and sunbathe and eat great salmon tagliatelle in the sunshine (which are both things that - if any university personnel are reading - I definitely did not do. Nope. Not at all)

You can't blame me for not wanting to stick around in hot, sweaty classrooms though. The countdown has officially begun - as I am writing this, there are exactly fourty days until the end of the May exam season. That's less than six weeks. For a girl who was bragging about being here for six months just a few weeks ago, I'm actually feeling a little overwhelmed.

my new year's resolution was to learn how to cartwheel... still working on it

My family visited last weekend for the bi-annual Easter trip we make to a town near Amiens, where we have some friends. I headed over there with them and we had a cracking trip; we visited Saint-Quentin (lovingly named Saint-Qu by the locals... have a go at saying it out loud in a French accent, you'll hear something a little more edgy), Meaux (famous for yummy brie) and some other good places. It was nice to see them and they came and took a ton of my stuff away in the hope that it will make the move easier in five and a half weeks' time. (Five and a half weeks. What the dean.)

I'm also now at the stage where I'm trying to squeeze everything in before I get on my ferry home. Because French universities are terrible and hate international students, I have absolutely no idea when my exams are, so I'm not sure how long I actually have left here in Rouen. I am therefore excitedly booking trips willy-nilly - Montpellier, check, another jaunt to Paris, check, go-karting, why not, that weird old charity shop sale that happens every month where it's a kilo for a fiver and you always meant to go...

Fourty days... isn't that just weird? It really rushed up towards me. Obviously, there's plenty left to do - I'm in a play, and there's exams to revise for, and all my trips to get in - but in fourty days, I will be able to turn around and say, "I did it." It was really, really hard, but I made myself a little family here, and I figured the crappy stuff out, and... yeah. It's a lovely feeling.
And hey, even if the weather doesn't keep up - that's good enough for me.

Josie
x

Day #182 - SIX MONTHS/happy holidays

SIX MONTHS!! I'VE BEEN HERE FOR SIX MONTHS!
This is a very grand achievement for the girl who was sure, after the first month, that she would be home on the first plane back to the country where she can use all her bank cards and use £££ and say things in English and have people understand her through her accent.
Six months. That's 262,080 minutes. Which is like, half of that song from Rent.

So what have I done with my 262,080 minutes? I have been an extra in a French film. I have made some excellent friends. I have drunk wine and eaten baguettes from the market out in the sun on a Sunday lunchtime. I found a house, and moved in. I have been to Paris about a kajillion times. I have been to a funfair on the river Seine. I have joined a choir. I have signed up to be in a play. I have been wine tasting, and to Lyon for the lights festival. I have done Erasmus parties and basement parties and many nights spent in with a bottle of wine. There's probably a load of other stuff.

This week was my official spring holiday, and I spent it staying in my friends' flat in the centre of town while they were away. It felt like a proper little holiday, and I got to explore the city while almost everyone was away.

the cathédrale notre-dame de rouen

 

the jardin des plantes on the wrong other side of the river

Oh yes, fair warning, this post will be very picture-heavy.

The weather picked up considerably and by the last day of the holiday, it was 20°C and I had tea in the garden and wore sunglasses and everything. It took me straight back to sweating on buses and having tea in the sunshine when I first arrived in September.

I also took a little day trip with a friend to Honfleur, which is a lovely seaside town in Normandy which is very, very old and very pretty. 10/10 would recommend!

who r u

erik satie museum

 

SIX MONTHS. I can't get over it. I hope that's enough reason to make a blog post like this, which was basically me just showing off about my little holiday. I ate plenty of baguettes, watched plenty of Twin Peaks, Community and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and drank plenty of wine. I actually broached the transition from red wine season (winter) to white wine season (summer) with a couple of glasses of rosé on Saturday whilst watching Don't Tell The Bride. (That's right, kids, just because you've moved abroad, it doesn't mean you will ever stop watching trash TV. In fact, you will watch more trash TV. Especially when you're drinking.)

The fact that I've been here six months also means that I am basically starting the countdown to going home. Lots of my friends have already booked their flights back and have started organising how they're going to ship their things home. I have had to start worrying about finding accommodation for my fourth year of university. And, weirdly, as the weather gets warmer and as I keep discovering new and cool things around the region and around the city, I am already feeling nostalgic. I almost don't want to move back to Scotland where there are no 6am bakeries and the Sunday markets are farmer's markets and there are posh people who dress like homeless people but with really clean trainers.

??????????? I have no point to this post beyond: Rouen, you're lovely, Normandy, I love you, sunshine, bring it my way.

LOTS OF LOVE
Josie

x

Day #175 - The art of not updating.

The higher the numbers in the titles go, the less I feel like I have achieved something, and more like I am a sad prisoner scratching tally marks into the wall, which isn't really the sort of vibe I was planning on giving out, if I'm being honest.
So, after on updating once (once! Appalling!) in February, I am back to tell you Where The Flipping Heck I Have Been. Because we belong to the Internet/Buzzfeed generation, I'm going to do this all in handy, easy-to-digest categories.

I TURNED TWENTY-ONE.
I honoured it by misspelling a celebratory tweet, which I can blame on my friend Saf's excellent tequila sunrises. Then I went out and got very, very drunk in some bar off the Vieux Marché (which I believe is called Le Vicomté ???). The next day (my actual birthday), we managed to haul ourselves out of bed in time for the Sunday morning market, and then my other friend Maddi showed up (look at me!! Josie Two-friends!!). Then we went home before realising that had been a horrible mistake and all the shops are closed on Sundays and we had absolutely no food - including no ingredients for a birthday cake.
Being the resourceful girls that they are, Safiya and Maddi constructed this monstrosity delight out of rice krispies, all my Milka chocolate (ahem) and a scented tealight:

Then I got sick and spent the entire night vomiting. But before that, it was all really, really nice, and I got flowers and a sweet silk shirt and some comfy socks, and what more could you possibly want?

I FINALLY STOPPED GETTING LOST IN ROUEN.
In my defence, all the old buildings look the same.

I FINALLY CLIMBED THE GROS HORLOGE.
The gros horloge is that sparkly clock that I was so excited about way back in September when I was a fresh-faced young sprite. Anyway, by the time I realised it was even possible to climb up the thing, all my friends had already done it, and had the lovely photographs to prove it. Well! Here is my photograph! Ha ha ha ha let me join your gang now please

not quite the view from the top, but isn't it nice?

I also decided to test out the Panorama XXL - it's this weird blue cylinder that they built on the banks of the Seine, out by the docks, and nobody had any idea what it is. It turns out it's a sort of arty installation where you can see a big picture of Rome all around you. I'm making it sound less cool than it is. What I'm saying is, I'm going full tourist.

I WENT TO PARIS!
Again! Another visitor, another town. Me and Eric hit up all the sights, and I thought I would keep my climbing-things-streak from the sparkly clock going by heading up to the third floor of the Eiffel tower. It's only like, 990ft off the ground. There was no complaining or screaming or crying from either of us. At all. Nope.

 

hiya, paris!

It's actually the first time since I've been here that I've seen the Eiffel tower close up, which is ridiculous, because everyone else who spends their years abroad seems to get off the plane and run straight to the Jardins de Trocadéro. Anyway, it was nice. It was also very, very windy.
Something else that I have wanted to do since moving to France, and hadn't done yet: Disneyland Paris! Do not judge, it was magical, and Eric stopped making me go on rollercoasters after I almost cried on that Aerosmith-themed one.

THE HOLIDAYS STARTED.
As if all my other holidays weren't enough. Rather than being left in Rouen on my own, as I had expected, I'm slowly filling my week up with trips to places around Rouen and Normandy that I haven't ticked off my to-do list yet - climbing up to panorama spots, heading to new spots, visiting the old plague burial ground, as well as Honfleur and other towns.

i hope you're not sick of views yet

I can't believe it's already the half-term holidays! The weather is already picking up - the sunshine has finally come back into my life, although it's not quite warm yet. Before you know it, it'll be Easter. My promise to myself that I wouldn't get on any more planes home until I finish school here - that's the end of May - is looking more and more do-able, and the idea of not having to traipse back through Charles de Gaulle airport warms my heart almost as much as the sunshine.

I'm sure I will update this again soon with news of my holiday adventures, but if I don't, I wrote a little piece for Prancing Through Life to tide you over until then. 
Happy winter break, everyone! And for those of you who have already had your holiday.. ha ha. I'm going shopping now.

Josie
x

day #130 - war is over (if you want it)

Safe to say, it's been a weird week.

I don't know if you've been watching the news lately, but a lot of really crappy things happened in Paris over the past week. I thought I might address that bit first, because it is a heck of a lot worse than anything that might have happened to me lately.

a je suis charlie sign at the bus stop

Basically, to everyone who wished me to 'stay safe' or 'look after yourself!' - your fears are unfounded; the attacks happened in Paris, which is a safe 84 miles away from where I am right now according to Google Maps (it's probably more, since the kosher supermarket which was held under siege was in the East) (feel free to correct me, any pernickety rouennais who may be reading this).
Rather than reciprocal violence, the attacks in Paris seem to have been followed by an outpouring of grief - the newspapers are calling it the French 9/11, my university announced a minute's silence throughout the campus, and every single bus stop and shop window is showing the now-famous Je suis Charlie sign. There have been a few vigils and marches to show support of Charlie Hebdo, although I haven't been able to make it thanks to a really, really inconveniently-timed bus strike.
Safe to say, rather than feeling threatened, the French have really risen up in support of the victims and their families. Whatever you think you know, whatever you have to say about the events of the past week, this country is still in shock and trying to find whatever way they can to claw back some feeling of control and normalcy - whether it's through holding a pen to the sky in solidarity, or buying the last copy of Charlie Hebdo on the shelf.
(Sidenote: I have to say that I've been incredibly irritated by a lot of the self-righteous Facebook statuses and tweets talking about the magazine being racist, bigoted and islamophobic - my thoughts on the subject are fairly neatly summed up in this Huffington Post article.)

the je suis charlie sign displayed in the corner of the tv screen

In other far, far less important news, I have just finished my exams. These were the end-of-term exams for semester one, and I had five - I took one of my exams in December. The first thing I did, naturally, was head straight to the pub to celebrate. I now get a four-day weekend before I have to start the whole rigmarole again and sign up to all my semester two classes and start learning again.
The bus strike was a real pain in the arse (when isn't it?) and was handily scheduled to be spread across 5 days of the examination period, but I made it through - after having to take a couple of disgustingly early trains to replace cancelled buses.

I'm now officially and academically halfway through my year abroad and I have to say, I'm feeling pretty comfortable and optimistic. Now that the January exams are out of the way, I have a month or so until my Next Big Thing - my 21st birthday. I don't know what will happen until then - probably the trips to the pub, teas in cafés and the parties in tiny town-centre flats that I don't bother to blog about - but I know that I am armed with my student loan and a list of places to go and people to see. May the rest of 2015 be better.

Josie
x

Day #66 - funfairs + where is the wifi

I am typing this from my deathbed. I have caught the common cold and have therefore been a coughy, coldy ill-bag for the past week. Some may call it man flu, I'm calling it The End of Days.

To make it worse, I was forced to the realisation this week that we are officially in l'Université de Rouen's essay season, except, unlike in Edinburgh, it's not so much an essay season as an each-individual-class-expects-an-oral-presentation-plus-a-written-essay-plus-an-in-class-exam-over-the-next-two-weeks season. Safe to say, peeps be stressed, and by "peeps" I mean "people with 7 different classes", and by that I mean me. Me. I have so much work.

an unrelated photograph of the sunset over saint-hilaire

Of course, I haven't actually been doing any work, because what's the point in that? I'm an ERASMUS student! ERASMUS students don't do work! ERASMUS students take long weekend trips to Barcelona for literally no reason and take instant photographs of each other drinking wine on balconies and riding bikes. That's it. There is no essay-writing. Most of my free time is spent sleeping or eating biscuits in bed, if I'm being quite honest with you. The rest is filled with trips to funfairs, day-drinking in cafés and going to the cinema.

My increasing laziness is only exacerbated by the fact that the French seem to have a sort of "you make it up" system. They can feed you as much information as you like, but none of it ever appears to be useful, and you end up waffling for six pages. The most common type of essay that I am asked to write in university is a synthèse, where they say to you, "Right, write about [insert topic here]," and you have to come up with your own problématique - that is, you come up with the discussion point, because the professors are too lazy to come up with their own questions. And the whole thing is in French. 

The other point is that the universities seem to be very wary of the Internet, as though it's not something that all of their students and professors access every single day. One of our lecturers legitimately said to us: "Why should the university pay me if I put your homework online?" Also there is NO WIFI IN THE LIBRARY. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE ENTIRE ESSAYS WITH A LIMITED COLLECTION OF BOOKS AND THE PALTRY 3G ON MY PHONE???? It's enough to make anyone want to run away to Barcelona.

I quite fancy Barcelona, actually, if anyone fancies lending me a few euros for a plane ticket. I haven't been able to find the time, unfortunately, but I did use this Tuesday's jour férié (it's a bank holiday. Sort of) to head down to la Foire Saint-Romaine on the Seine.

the funfair (it's much bigger than it looks)

La Foire, or the fair, was absolutely flippin' massive - it's been there since the end of October and it's sticking around until November 23rd, but it's huge, stretching all across one bank of the river. There are 3 rollercoasters and 14,000,000 opportunities to win a goldfish, as well as food stalls - I tried my first croustillons - and other classic funfair rides. I was there for an hour and a half or so and I only managed to get about a third of the wandering in. If I was feeling lazier, I would have taken the bus to get from one end to the other, except there is only one bus every hour and a half on the jours fériés so I had to use my feet like any other common or garden peasant.

The fair is clearing off just in time for Rouen's Christmas market to get settled outside the Notre Dame (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen, guys, I'm local now) and I have to say that I am possibly the most excited human being ever. Apparently the Christmas market is terrible, but from November 28th there will be a ferris wheel and an ice skating rink and mulled wine and that is all I truly want.

nice lil photo of the cathedral taken from the top of the funfair ferris wheel

 I hope that the exam season works itself out, in a way, because I've been occupying my brain with far more exciting things, like planning trips to Lyon to see the Fête des Lumières and trips to Paris for the Christmas market at the Champs-Elysées and the jardins du Trocadéro (the bit right in front of the Eiffel Tower). Rouen itself is currently in the middle of something called the Semaine de Zazimuts (me neither), but that means that there's loads of little things going on around the town; for example, I'm going to go watch a Charlie Chaplin film on Saturday, accompanied by a live orchestra. Pas mal.

I haven't got much else to say besides that. I feel like I spent my first 6 weeks here wishing I was busy, and now I am, I just want to stay in bed all day with a cup of Earl Grey and maybe paint my nails. My French has improved tenfold though, and I am a happy little bean in spite of the fact that I have about three friends with whom I can actually speak fast, fluent, flawed English. And that's OK! As long as I pass all my classes and I am allowed to return to Edinburgh for fourth year, where I will be able to speak fast, fluent, flawed English for the rest of my life if I so desire.

being just slightly problematic at the funfair

Hope all is well my good friends.

Josie

x

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.