3 months later

Yesterday marked 3 months since I left France, and I'm feeling quite nostalgic about it all. In the weeks after I left it was so fresh in my mind that England was to me strange and unfamiliar. Yet now I look at photos and remember it all and it seems like it was somebody else living my life there.

I remember my first week as if it were yesterday; the fear and excitement of it. Staying our first night in the Etap hotel. Wandering round Blois, the chateau and the river. The practical things like signing our house contract and going to Leclerc for the first time to do our shopping. Buying a bicycle and attempting to ride it! I remember being shown round the schools and thinking, how the hell was I going to be able to teach anything? Meeting our neighbours, going round to their house-warming. Meeting Nico and Remi.

I remember church on a sunday, singing the songs in French and often drifting off during the sermon. Sunny days, cycling. Seeing Chambord for the first time. I remember making big dinners with everybody at our house, playing euchre and watching crap french telly just because it was on. Making crepes and drinking wine with everything. Preparing lessons the night (and sometimes hour) before, waking up early to get to my 8 am classes. Cocktails at Le Singe Vert, tiny coffees in Louis XII.

Because I'm in such a different place now to how I was then- spiritually and emotionally- it's like for a while I needed to cut myself off from these times in order to move on.

3 months later- a quarter of a year- I feel like my time in Blois is a closed chapter in my life in many ways. But then I sneak open one of the pages and the sensations and memories of it come flooding back. I don't look over the bad pages- the weakness and the tiredness, the times I was ill, feeling inadequate at speaking French, how far I felt from God. I remember Paris and sunshine and good food, the market on saturdays, bike rides, wine-tasting, visiting castles. Coffee and a cigarette on my windowsill, sunsets and sunrises. Feeling adult and independent, having a real job.

When people ask me how my year abroad went, my answer is always the same. 'It was awesome, but I'm so glad to be back.'

All the same, I miss the good bits. I guess that's what you'd call nostalgia.