New country, New adventure.

As I ‘repose un peu dans ma chambre’, I’ve begun thinking about this whole year. I can hand on the heart say that I am, in some ways, a very different person than I was this time last year. There’s no doubting the fact that I’m a lot more cultured, as is everyone who partakes in a year abroad. Sometimes I think that maybe that’s even more important than academic education, don’t get me wrong now, of course academic education is important,(STAY IN SCHOOL KIDS) and everybody should attend school until they’re at the very least, 16.(as is the finishing age in many countries) But in saying that, through experience I’ve learned that you learn so much more about the world, and about different ways of life, by traveling, being well read and observing (you can learn a lot about a person just from the way they move).

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole… 9 months since I left Ireland (mental isn’t it?).  And only another month and half left of this adventure. Ah but sure, every day is an adventure, non? One thing I won’t miss, is lugging all that bloody luggage around, not that I did it that often but seven plane rides later you start to wonder why you even need that much stuff. Wait ‘til I tell ye about my journey to Barcelona! First of all, the lovely people of SNCF (the train company) decided to go on strike (lovely), I prayed to every god there is that my train wouldn’t be cancelled, mais what did I find? Yep. My train was cancelled, on I went up to the train station to sort out another way to get there without having to pay even more money, god bless the woman at the desk, I know she was being helpful, but she wasn’t really that helpful. This, friends, is what she told me to do: Get the bus to Nimes, get a train from Nimes to Montpellier, a train from Montpellier to Perpignan, and onwards to Barca. My face must have been the picture of ‘you must be jokin’ ‘, so I went ahead and asked her; are you sure there’s no other direct trains to Barcelona? Her response? ‘No. There’s none, I’m sorry. Good luck’.  Eeeeem. Okay. Did I follow this? I did not.. I researched it myself and did it my way.  (As ya do). Anyhow, I took the only two running trains that got me to Barcelona, ergo two hours late. The first train was fine, I just took a random seat an prayed nobody would make me move, but then, when I got to Perpignan the only connecting train to Barcelona was at 12h 13 which meant that I had a two hour wait, nevertheless I was plenty entertained with dissatisfied customers, one man was threatening  one of the information clerks, I was sorta like ‘chill dude, why not see the funny side in all of this?’..clearly he didn’t think it was rather quite funny. The train journey to Barcelona from Perpignan wasn’t as long as the one before, however because EVERYONE was on the train we didn’t have any seats, which meant we had to move all our luggage anytime anybody wanted to either use the toilets, go upstairs or leave the train. Bundle of laughs so it was. At one  particular stop this guy moved my suitcase but he pulled on the handle a tad too late and it broke, his face was nothing short than priceless, you’d swear he’d killed a man. I just laughed it off, I thought it was quite hilarious. He didn’t look at me for the rest of the journey. I was lucky that my host family met me at the station or I probably would have collapsed in exhaustion. They were so lovely, helping with my bags and whatnot! Such sweetie pies! I arrived on Saturday, that evening I got to see the host child in one of her dance performances, it was a contemporary interpretation of water and it’s different forms, it was interesting , I’d never seen anything like it before…I did enjoy it though! And do ya know what’s ironic? It started raining on our way there!  I’m enjoying Spain so far, there’s not a food I haven’t like, which is great because ya know me now, I does love me some food! The weather isn’t as hot as it was in Avignon (and there’s people back home being all like ‘yeah there’s a heatwave here this weekend’, I’ll tell ya what, ye come back to me when it’s 35 degrees without wind and I’ll say something ) which was great because it was near impossible to be motivated in that heat, all you want to do is sleep.

Anyway, the point of this whole post is really, I've learned so much more about people and the way the work in this one year than I probably have my whole life, it's amazing how living in an unfamiliar place opens up your eyes to the world around you (because if you didn't you'd probably get lost, because ya know, you don't know where you are). This year abroad has only heightened my wanderlust and I can't wait to finish university so I can discover bigger and better things!! 

En fait, I’ve ended one adventure and begun another, here’s to a great summer in Espana! But, I really do miss France and the people in it. Vive la France, vive la baguette!

In the next edition: Pros and Cons of living in France, for all of those who wish to possibly someday maybe in a lifetime move there.

Oh P.S. Look at my new room, how cool right? All those books...