Tag Archives: french

England is looming

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As my time in Paris draws to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to miss about living in here and what I’m looking forward to having back in my life once I’m in England.

Things I’m going to miss

  • The boulangeries: It’s so nice being able to buy a fresh baguette or croissant whenever you fancy, I don’t think Durham will be able to match that.
  • Drinks by the seine: A lovely place to meet up with friends in the evening!
  • Café au lait/ café crème: I basically became addicted to these, in theory the same as a latte but for some reason it just tastes so much better.
  • Crêpes on every corner: Nutella and banana crêpes are soooo good.
  • How much there is to do: If you’re bored its so easy to find something to do for free. That reminds me that I’m going to miss the gardens and the free access to museums a lot as well.
  • The transport system: It’s so easy to get to where you want to be, with so many different options for the same route. As long as there isn’t any snow or strikes that is…
  • Speaking French: It’s the best feeling when you actually understand and contribute normally to a conversation.

Things I won’t miss

  • The taste of the water: The water in my flat was weird. I don’t know why.
  • Going for runs and trying to dodge all the tourists: One of the most frustrating things, why doesn’t anyone move out the way when they see you coming!
  • Not having an oven: So many recipes that wanted to be made and weren’t, can’t wait to do some baking finally!
  • The lack of a good cup of tea in cafes: I don’t have much to add, I just really miss buying tea when I’m out.
  • Nothing at all open Sundays/ bank holidays: What if I run out of milk on a Sunday!? Or I need to go to the doctors! Both of these things happened, the solution was always expensive.
  • The prices: (!) I can’t wait to put my Tesco Clubcard back to work and actually buy food for reasonable prices.
  • Living on my own: I’m glad I did it, but I’m ready to live with people again, it can get very lonely.
  • Speaking French: As much as I love it, I also hate it when I can’t understand and contribute. It will be nice to go out and not fear having to ask questions. Being able to speak a language fluently is so amazing.

As my next blog will hopefully be a video blog with pictures and videos of my year, I wanted to take this chance to talk about whether I actually met my aims for my second semester. My aims were to make more French friends and speak more French in general. While I’m not sure I made actual friends, I do have a French student on Whatsapp since we were lab partners! And I’m actually quite proud that I put myself in the situation where I was working in a pair with one French student for six weeks- It certainly meant I was speaking more French. As far as speaking French is concerned, I definitely did more of that due to a group project and working in a café as well as forcing myself to speak French was I was out and about. While I’m not fluent yet (anyone will tell you that this is very difficult), I certainly feel much more comfortable with the language than when I arrived and in general I’m comfortable conversing. The good news is I have a lifetime to improve, so I’ll definitely be returning to Paris! A bientôt x

Round 2

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My first week back for my second and final semester starts tomorrow. This time around I was ready for the inefficient French system and really tried my best to be organised. This meant sending emails to all the modules I wanted to do at the end of the December. However, despite my best efforts I’ve somehow ended up doing something a bit different from my original plan. The good news is that I haven’t missed the first two weeks of classes, so compared to last time, everything is looking good.

Caught up with friends
and my dogs!

After having spent a great few weeks at home catching up with my family as well as managing to see some friends that I hadn’t seen since June it’s safe to say I wasn’t too pleased about coming back to Paris on the 7th of January to do my exams… Just to make it worse I only got back to my flat the night before my first two exams, and it really wasn’t easy dragging all that extra Christmas present weight up four flights of stairs. I couldn’t be happier that my exams are over and after a very well timed trip to London and the return of my boyfriend later, I’m now very excited to be here and to get back into the swing of things.

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Now part of the Sorbonne!

Then again, now that the exams are out of the way, I’ve had more time to worry about my seriously full timetable. I feel very very sorry for the actual physics students here who basically work 8:30 – 18:00 every day. A very different experience to a Durham timetable in my opinion. One piece of exciting news is that my University has become part of the Sorbonne, which happened on the 1st of January which meant I came back to new signs and logos all around the campus. This also makes it a lot easier for me when people ask which university I got to, a ‘The Sorbonne’ is a lot simpler than ‘Université Pierre et Marie Curie’!

One thing I noticed straight away once I was back was that after three weeks of only speaking English, I was really struggling to understand any French. It really is one of those things where you need to use it or you’ll lose it! Even after a week of just enjoying Paris and relaxing I’m still not sure I feel ready to start learning in French again. Hopefully, by the end of next week I will have picked it all back up.

So since nothing new or exciting has really happened to me recently, I wanted to take a look back at my favourite moment from my first semester. For me this was realising that I was finally comfortable living in this new city. This was the moment when I realised that I can do the whole year and really enjoy it. I realised that I know the city, I can understand French, I can sort things out in a different language and live all by myself. I can’t say that it was a very memorable moment, or that I remember where I was when it happened, but there definitely was a moment and it was a really great feeling.

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I can be French!

 

 

 

To finish off, I wanted to talk about my aims for the next semester. Hopefully by my last blog post I’ll be able to look back at this and say that I achieved what I set out to do. My reason for studying abroad was to experience living in a different country, look at physics from a different point of view but mainly to improve my French. With everything that happened in the first semester, I felt like I didn’t put my all into this, I still improved but I didn’t feel like I made the most of every situation. Because of this, my aims for the next semester are to make more French friends, speak more French in general and really make an effort to do this. Wish me luck!