In the beginning....

The two most common responses I get from people when I mention I'm taking a year abroad in France are as follows: 'You must be fluent then?' or, 'Oooh lucky you, that sunshine!'. To which I patiently explain that a) I am nowhere near fluent (surely this is the purpose of going to live in France?!) and b) I'm not going to the South and thus am not holding out hope of a year-round tan. So anyway, this is the beginning; le commencement, of my year-abroad blog... No idea who is actually going to read this (!) but I will attempt to write on here as much as I can what's happening in my frenchy little life... and you can leave me nice encouraging comments if you wish!

This is what I'm going to be doing- I have been assigned a 7-month post as an English assistant (October-April) , working a total of 12 hours/week in a collège (middle school) and a lycée (high school) - 6 hours in each. My main role is to help students with their spoken English in small conversation classes, and teach them about British culture (or lack thereof, you might say). I get paid 750 Euros a month (once they've taken deductions) which is pretty sweet! (Then again I'm getting less than half the amount of loan as in England, which is a bit sucky! No shopping in all those Parisian boutiques after all) I'll be living in a town called Blois which is in the département Loir-et-Cher. It's in the Loire valley- think South-West of Paris (about 2 hours by train) It's a really pretty region with lots of chateaux. Toulouse was my first choice on my application form, but I'm happy with Blois- it has a castle and it's near (ish) Paris, what more could you want?

Apparently, it's one of the best places to learn French because there's no regional accent... the equivalent of BBC or Oxford English, if you will. Am also hoping I will become acquainted with young, handsome French millionaire named Jean-Pierre or the like, naturally in possession of a large and impressive chateau...!I've been in touch with the previous assistants at the schools I'm working at- the college is a bit rough, apparently (!) and the students can be challenging but who doesn't like a challenge! I've also heard from two of this year's assitants- one who lives really near me in England so I'm going to meet up with her soon. It would be good to know at least one person before I actually get there! I will hopefully live with some other assistants as I don't think I really want to live all on my own. I'm visiting the town with my parents at the beginning of sept so maybe I will be able to find something then, as well as try sort out a bank account and things like that.

I'm planning to go for proper at the end of sept (around the 25th) which gives me a week or two before my work starts to sort stuff out. I swing between being really excited and really scared. I'm not completely terrified yet, which is quite surprising, given that I've never done anything remotely this challenging on my own before. I've never even travelled to another country on my own (the British isles don't really count!) so even that kind of makes me nervous! On the other hand though, I have a completely blank canvas for the next year- how many people get to do that? I have compiled a list of things that that are good about France, as follows (Jenny, if you're reading this, do u still have our '20 raisons pourquoi on aime la France'??)

1) baguettes
2) berets
3) the eiffel tower
4) skinny, chic french women (hoping their effect will rub off on me)
5) no chavs (unless there exists a French version... who at any rate would be classier than their British counterparts)

As you can see, I'm in for a good year. Please come visit me if you can... I'm only a few hours away on the train.

That's all for now....Au revoir!