Newsflash folks: ELLA IS BACK IN THE
COUNTRY! After a horrendous car journey to Calais through torrential rain
(apparently France was crying at my departure) and a typical Dove family mad
dash for the Eurotunnel, here I am safe and sound, back in the Garden of England.
Giant French dictionary, cuddly toys, shoe rack, the lot. In fact, I’m sitting
exactly where I sat 7 months ago (7 MONTHS?!)
when I first decided to start a ‘gay’ year abroad blog (see entry 1).
How time has flown.
I don’t have to tell you whether I’ve enjoyed my time in France or not, as I
think spending almost 60 euros in the Le Havre tourist office the other day
says it all. My entire family are now kitted out with postcards, pens and mugs with
genius slogans. ‘100% Havrais’, ‘HAVRE nice day/night/week’, ‘I HAVRE dream’...sheer
brilliance. I’ve always been a sucker for a bit of wordplay. I even bought an ‘I
Love Le Havre’ t-shirt, something I never thought I’d own when I first set eyes
upon the monstrous Hotel de Ville (Google it). But as one friend recently
commented, despite its greyness and excessive usage of concrete, Le Havre DOES
have charm. The food is good (with the exception of the dyed-black Darth Vador
burgers in Quick), the people are lovely, and it does have everything you need
shop and entertainment-wise. I’ve joined exercise classes, I swim, I go to
languages café every week. My friends and I even have a ‘regular’ salon de thé
(aka café) which serves THE best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted, and the crepes and
maxi-banana splits aren’t half bad either! Incidentally, quick shout out here to
my fellow Le Havre English assistant ladzz, who I’m going to miss an awful lot,
but I know we’ll all stay in touch and maybe it will even lead to some American/Australian
holidays in future! (hint hint...) I’ve even managed to make a few French
friends (teachers included!), although admittedly not many are my own age....Still,
you win some you lose some, and I know I’d be welcomed back to many of their
houses with open arms should I ever fancy popping over on the ferry for a
weekend in the big LH.
As far as travelling is concerned, I’ve also
done pretty well. As well as touring all around Haute-Normandie, I’ve visited
Rouen, Caen (where we also went to Bayeux and Omaha Beach), Paris, Disneyland
(twice!), Lille, Reims, Versailles, and most recently, Nice and Monaco, both of
which were absolutely gorgeous and made me realise just how much of a wuss I
was only choosing places in the North so as to be ‘closer to home’. During all
of these trips (with the possible exception of Disneyland), I’ve attempted to
speak French at least a little. Gone are the days of ‘est-ce que je peux avoir
SOME ketchup’ and ‘où est l’HOSTAL PLEASE?’, although of course there are still
occasional slips (dinner party incidents spring to mind...see previous entries).
However, I’ve managed to laugh off the majority of these faux-pas, and I’ve had
a significant amount of Facebook friend requests from my students, though this
is probably due to the fact that I bought them sweets as a goodbye present.
Unfortunately though, this didn’t work with one class who actually CHEERED when
I told them it was our last lesson and then proceeded to complain that the
lollies were ‘too small’ before grabbing about five each and running away
whooping. Brats.
Élèves from hell aside,
I really was quite sad to leave the large majority of my classes, though I was
pleased to see that since my departure, two eager beavers have written
heartfelt (aka suck-up) messages of thanks and appreciation on my wall IN
ENGLISH! Definitely not the type of thing I did at school.... *cough cough*. Naturally,
I replied to each in a suitably formal teacher-style fashion. I believe I even told
one of them to ‘keep working hard with English’. Too cool.
So. What exactly have I learnt from this experience? Well, here’s a list of my top ten discoveries:
1) Tracksuits by day, parkas by night: the dress-code of a French
teen.
2) Speculoos (basically Nutella except it tastes of crushed
biscuits) is the most amazing thing on the planet. And it seemingly only exists
in the North. Crazy.
3) Colombians like carbs. My flatmate thought plain pasta with
plain rice constituted a proper meal...how wrong she was.
4) Fifteen year old boys DO like Taylor Swift. Even if they
pretend not to, the truth will be revealed the minute ‘Love Story’ is played during
a Valentine’s Day lesson.
5) If you speak English on the bus you either look like or
attract a weirdo.
6) French food is the best.
7) French milk is the worst.
8) The English lunchtime should be made longer. 4 course meals
are definitely the way forward.
9) The Channel is too cold for swimming in early April.
10) The SNCF station announcement noise makes everything better. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bobmqeNirU).
Oh, and one
final thing? After a surprising amount of positive feedback, I’ve come to the
conclusion that year abroad blogs (or mine at least...) are not ‘gay’ after
all. Thank you to my lovely readers for sticking with me; it’s been faaabulous
daaaahlings, and with a little bit of luck, I’ve even managed to entertain you!
The Road to
Rouen: Complete.
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