Hello!
Before I get going with a proper, full-on blog, I might take a minute to do a bit of an intro! I see myself as something of a contradictory character – I study English Literature but my favourite book is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I love to travel but I hate cars, planes, trains and any other type of transport (motion sickness) and I love French, France and pains au chocolat but I didn’t want to spend a year abroad with our Auld Ally.
In fact, back at school, when I was originally applying for uni places, after months of being torn between various course options, I eventually decided not to study French, but went for history instead, solely because I found the thought of a year abroad so horrifying. When I got to Edinburgh, I put that thought out of my head and pleaded with my DoS to let me do French instead of history, and now, here I am, about to head off, first to l’Université de Bourgogne, in Dijon, and then to the Lycée professionnel Les Alpilles in Miramas, near Marseille where I’ll be doing an assistantship.
In all honesty, all the things that bothered me about doing a year abroad in the first place are still on my mind – leaving my family, my amazing flat in Marchmont, friends, my boyfriend and everything familiar and beloved does still worry me, as does the thought of trying to manoeuvre my way around a totally new existence in a strange place. I love the varied and exciting life that I’ve created for myself in Edinburgh and it’s always seemed a bit self-sabotaging to exchange that for something else which might not measure up.
Visions of making some kind of major social faux pas and being an eternal outcast sometimes plague me late at night – but to be honest, social faux pas are kind of my thing anyway and that kind of mistake is rarely irreparable! I’m finding now, that my thoughts are straying far more often to all the things I’m looking forward to about the trip than the things I might miss in Edinburgh or the things that could go wrong. I can’t wait to travel around Europe a bit and fill out my ‘places I’ve been’ map on Facebook; I daydream about being able to flit around France like a native, speaking in awesome, colloquial Français, fulfilling my wish to be able to make puns in another language…it’s going to be amazing!
Above all, I think, it’s going to be an adventure; the type of adventure that people write about and blog about and then talk about for the rest of their lives, the type of adventure that people sometimes allow to pass them by and then regret it forever, so I’m absolutely determined to make it the adventure of a lifetime – I can’t wait!
