'Au revoir'

I've been back in France for almost two weeks now. Soon to find out that my bank account was closed and a cleaning lady wanted to pay a visit to my room as she thought I had already moved out.. What a stupid country.. On the contrary I came back to people who make my stay in France a truly amazing experience. They never disappoint :) Missing my lovely Marina though who I couldn't even say goodbye to, but I'll hopefully see her very, very soon :) From Saturday we're short of another awesome member of our 'Chocolat groupe', Francesca. I truly hate goodbyes... You promise yourself you won't cry, but you always do. You smile and cry alternately. The kisses and hugs are not sad at all. The worst part of farewells is the thought that you might never see this person again, and it's heart-breaking. I hope we will all continue to keep in touch after finishing our Erasmus year. We even made a contact list for marriage invitations hahah. I guess I'm never going to get married, but still everyone can come for my baby cat's christening, baby shower or whatever lol ;p The most important thing is not to lose contact and visit each other as often as possible, and I hope we'll never stop doing that :)

Getting off the topic I've got a week off at the moment and to my luck I had to get ill. I'm so scatty that I forgot to take cold/flu medicines from back home and I knew perfectly well that I was going to get ill very easily. So I've been spending almost 4 days not being able to leave my bed, coughing like and old lady, sneezing like an allergic person, and using tons of tissues to blow my nose with. Horrible times but fortunately I'm feeling better today and hopefully I'll be able to leave my room tomorrow and do some food shopping and finally buy a BICYCLE :D yes, a bicycle so I'll meet my beautiful Jean-Pierre, fall in love and then get run by a truck lol :D hopefully without the truck at the end ;p haha

Plus I wanted to do something productive like going to the theatre, but to my luck, there's no shows until the beginning of March... Why, oh why? I still have the Museum of Fine Arts left which I might finally pay a visit to as I've been trying to get there since September but always had better things to do. Hopefully it's worth a visit :)

Time to head back to 'Sex and the City' :)

Bonne soirée ;)

la France.. ooh la la

Bonsoir!

Change of plans. Now this blog is going to be both my writings space and a little journal from my year abroad in Besancon, France. Hope you'll enjoy ;)

Somewhere in France, 4.09.2012

So here I am, sitting in a TGV train to Besancon, my new home. It sounds strange calling it home, doesn’t it? A home where I barely understand the language, never been to before and don’t know a living soul. Hmm… that really must be a place called home ;) Anyway I’m being surprisingly calm. The only thing I was worried about was the subway in London. Maybe I would have been peaceful if I didn’t have to carry a massive suitcase, a huge backpack and a medium size handbag that could easily fit my laptop, Kindle, English - French pocket dictionary and a make-up bag. Fortunately I was lucky enough to attract strong gentlemen who were so eager to help me carry the suitcase downstairs that I couldn’t say no ;) Maybe it was my mind control? Who knows, never mind. I will never forget the worrying look at some lady’s face when she saw me struggling with my luggage. Her ‘Good luck’ was so encouraging, and by that time also the nicest thing that happened to me that day. Now I’m sitting in the train, wondering if my accommodation office would still be open. If not, where am I going to sleep? I don’t even want to think about it… everything went pretty smooth so far, let it continue please ;)

So the new chapter in my life begins today. I’ve got a year to learn the most beautiful language in the world, buy a bicycle, find my Jean-Pierre, and then travel France and Europe (or at least visit Paris, Cote d’Azur, Geneva and Rome ;)). Challenge accepted.

                Besancon, 5.09.2012

After arriving in Besancon it occurred that I have to take another train from the suburbs to the city centre. Panic in my head, how the hell am I going to buy the ticket? I can’t speak French! Luckily, the French are not far ahead from the British and there were many self-service ticket machines. First thing I’ve done was changing the language into English ;) Worrying a lot I found my ‘voie’ which was easy enough although with my entire luggage, it took me additional 3 minutes and I only had about 10. After 15 minutes journey, here I am – exhausted, with a heavy luggage and badly wanting a cigarette.  And again I was lucky enough to receive help from a very nice middle-aged man, who I couldn’t understand at all at first. Yet he was so patient with offering help to me that I was thanking him about 5 times during our way from the platform to the taxi rank.

Cigarette! That was the first thing I wanted to do while waiting for a taxi. When I finally arrived at the campus I was amazed. It was huge, green and even though it was really late, there was still lots of people around. I got out of the taxi, went to the accommodation office and there was a surprise waiting for me. It occurred that my ‘dossier’ with all my documents didn’t arrive which was weird considering the fact that I paid almost 10 pounds for plane postage that was supposed to arrive in 2-3 days… I had a lovely chat in French, trying to explain that I did send it and it must be somewhere there. No results. Finally I got the keys to a room on the 4^th floor in Batiment Pierre Gascar. No lift of course, but a man from the accommodation office helped me carry the suitcase. Even for him it was too heavy ;) Still excited I wanted to see the room and start unpacking my things but I met some nice people instead, who also helped me with the luggage, and I was invited to spend some time with them outside the uni restaurant. I was happy, making friends already yay!

My new room though wasn’t that exciting. It’s not big, but I expected that. It has everything that it should although the wardrobe is a bit scary and odd and I haven’t decided yet if I am going to keep my things in there. We’ll see. There’s no proper kitchen here, although there is a small kitchenette with two burners and a sink. Everyone have a small fridge in their room ;) It’s not a 5 star hotel but will do for the year. After kind of settling in the place and refreshing myself I hurried to meet people outside the restaurant. I thought all the Erasmus students don’t even try speaking French and they stick with English. To my surprise, all the people I met spoke French and it was really good French, not like mine. I felt a bit left out but if I understood or was asked something I tried speaking. That’s always a first step, isn’t it? It was a nice late evening and I met few Germans, Spanish, an Irish one and a French. Later on I managed to unpack some of the things and arranged them somehow in the room, I still haven’t finished though.

Next morning, I woke up with my whole body aching because of the luggage. I still needed to sort out my ‘dossier’ and go shopping with my German friend, Marina. I was pretty sure there should be at least a small shop on campus, but no there aren’t any. The closest one, Intermarche, is about 10-15 minutes away which is ridiculous. I did all my necessary shopping for few days and of course forgot about the adapter and now my battery is running low.

Alors, a bientot!