Oh yah, so much nicer than Manchester.
So I'm here in France!
Here, on this year abroad that I have railed against throughout my whole uni career, having led my own stroppy personal crusade against 'living in different countries' being the ultimate thing you could possibly do in your life.
(Yes, great, you're living in Stockholm/Madrid/Tokyo for 6 months before you jet off to the next city. Now please tell me about the meaningful relationships you're going to make in that short amount of time and how much fun you're really going to have when you're in a foreign country, away from your friends and family from home, where you can barely speak the language.) (Or, alternatively, tell me about how your four-month holiday - yes it was a holiday - in Indonesia was just so horrible and difficult.) (Okay, I'm done, I promise.)
So it is with great shame and guilt that I report that so far (admittedly two weeks in), I'm having quite a lot of fun. As it turns out, wandering the streets of Paris with the sun on your skin, stopping off in a beautiful garden to eat a delectable pastry, and doing your shopping in a charming little market are all quite nice things to do. Also, as I've been on my own the whole time, there is nobody to stop me from giving in to pretentiousness while I stroll through the Métro to the soundtrack of buskers, preening and imagining that I look just like Amélie. That being said, I haven't started work yet - so yes, I am in effect on holiday in Paris on my own for two weeks.
This holiday has, of course, been intruded on by Real Life Things, such as going to estate agents and opening bank accounts and having meetings with my new workplace and whatnot. Let it be known that even when I do these things in my native country, in my mother tongue, I feel constantly like a 13-year-old wearing an adult-shaped body suit. In France, speaking a language I'm half-comfortable with, dealing with systems different to those in England, I am useless.
Here are some things that have happened so far:
1. While opening a bank account, I realised halfway through a sentence that I didn't know the word for 'ATM' and ostentatiously mimed one by making a big square with my hands and pretending to take something out of it. The lady who was opening my account, bless her, not only understood (and told me the word) but also didn't laugh at me. I, on the other hand, spent the entire rest of the meeting desperately trying not to giggle as it sunk in what I had just done.
On the plus side, it taught me that no matter how long it takes, you can communicate anything - you will get there in the end.
2. I retroactively realised that the man in a suit at the shopping centre entrance was not, in fact, a salesman, and was actually a security guard checking everybody's bag. Just a few days earlier, after they had obviously asked to check my bag and I had misheard, I had sailed past with a 'non merci'. Good thing I'm not a terrorist.
3. The worst of all: the other day, I met with the headmistress of the school I'm going to be teaching in. It was all going relatively well, I thought, until I asked if the children were sometimes méchant. This word was taught to me in school in the context of animals: a puppy who stole a shoe, for example, as far I was concerned, would be méchant. Turns out that, at the very least for people, it does not mean naughty or cheeky. Turns out I just straight up asked this lovely woman if her pupils were evil criminals. Lesson learned.
I'd like to think that I'll be able to report back in another two weeks saying that I'm practically a native. If not though, hopefully at least I'll have another list of ways I've made a complete tit of myself.
