Monday 25 June 2012

The long road to Lannion

I woke up this morning to my letter from France. Funny thing is, in my half-dead morning state, I almost missed it. I grabbed the pile of post from the floor and started flicking through the little envelopes. That was my mistake. I presumed, for some unknown reason, that the letter would come in a 'normal' regular sized envelope. There was an A4 envelope in the pile, but it didn't occur to me to check that one too, that is until I caught a glimpse of the word 'Rennes'.

The first port of call after learning that I've been appointed to a college in Lannion, was to see where it was - and obviously - Google Maps has the solution. Lannion is really quite North and is actually about a 2 hours drive to the city of Rennes itself. It doesn't look too isolated though, so hopefully it won't be too bad. It seems like a very floral, welcoming town and isn't too far from the Pink Granite Coast... 
It seems however, that it will be a long journey to get there. I'll be travelling for about the same time as my friend who is going to La Reunion... What? Briefly, here are the travel options I've considered so far:
  • Fly from Birmingham to Paris Orly, from Paris Orly to Lannion.
  • Fly from Birmingham to Paris CDG followed by a 6-hour TGV to Lannion
  • Get the Eurostar to Paris du Nord, the metro to Paris Gare de Montparnasse, then TGV to Lannion
The second option is my favourite at the minute but it would mean leaving for Birmingham no later than 3am to get the 06h30 flight, land at just gone 9am and sit around in Charles De Gaulle for 4 hours (there is a TGV before that, but chances are I wouldn't make it through customs in time) then get a 6-hour TGV to Lannion. Hum. There's also the possibility of flying to Brest and then getting the TGV. too many options and my head feels like it's going to implode. I was initially thinking that I'd travel by land, so that way I could take as much as I could carry without getting charged a ridiculous amount, but having seen the amount of changes I'd have to go through and fight with my luggage on the various trains... I don't know.

On a slightly brighter point, I have seen two advertisements for accommodation near the college which I'll be working in. Initially, I was going to 'hop' over to France to check the places out before I signed any contract, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it's quite a ridiculous idea. Other people won't be doing that (most won't have the means to do so, either because of money, distance or both). Having said that, the nightmare I had with the accommodation in Nottingham before going University of Leeds has really made me anxious about contracts and housing etc.

I would say that the next steps for me are; to sent back my acceptance of my posts, get the medical certificate signed, work out who my responsable(s) is/are and whether I need to contact them and then possibly consider contacting these landlord about the accommodation. I think I definitely underestimated the amount of planning, stress and organisation this Year Abroad is going to take.



Thursday 21 June 2012

I Czech-ed out what Prague has to offer...

Okay, so forgive me for the really bad pun used in the title of this post. I couldn't resist. Very recently, I spent 3 days in Prague, Czech Republic with 3 friends as a celebration of the end of second year. The first thing, I would suggest if you're thinking of going there, is stay for longer than 3 days. We managed to fit in a lot of sight-seeing and opportunities to take very touristy photos. The biggest positive, apart from chilling and having fun, is that I now feel slightly more prepared for my year in France. That said, however, it has highlighted a few things that I should be aware of. I'd like to think that most of these won't happen though, because unlike, Czech, I speak French, even if I'm not confident with it. 


The first point, I was in two minds whether to mention it or not, but I decided I will. What makes this worse, is that all four of us hadn't realised the mistake we had made. In our defence, it was Monday morning and clearly not thinking straight, we saw a sign saying Kouřeni zakázáno. We immediately presumed that this was the name of the tram stop and preceded to try and find it on the map. Many confusing minutes later, a man approached us asking if we spoke Spanish. Having done a beginners' course 2 years ago, we attempted to explain where we wanted to go. Upon understanding '18' we guessed that was the number of the tram we needed, so off we went. To our surprise the next tram stop had the same sign. It was the no smoking sign. It even had the, what appears to be at least Europe-wide, red circle sign.


But that's enough of fails. As I don't want this post to go on forever, I'm just going to pick one significant things from each day to talk about. Sunday, I'm going to skip; we flew out there and had a meal. Tis all. Monday, as above, but also, we went on a free tour, starting off in Old Town Square. The square itself was probably the best bit, even though we did also visit the Jewish Quarter, we didn't get to see too much as it required tickets for about 400 crowns, maybe more. This is the Astronomical Clock from 1410, roughly. The detail on it is amazing considering when it was built. Every hour, there was some animation which basically reminded the people that they had one hour less to live. Cheerful.

Tuesday, we were very cultural and went to plenty of museums and stuff, so it's really difficult to choose just one picture. So I won't. I know what happened, my friends do too, but you'll just have to live with not knowing. Ha. Wednesday, we took a relaxing boat ride to the zoo. This was my favourite day because some of the animals were just so damn cute. There were hungry polar bears which almost broke down the metal door where their food arrived, meerkats who refused to stand on two paws (I presume they have paws...) and giraffes that charged up and down their enclosure because something startled them.






Still waiting...

There's not really much to update on the Year Abroad front, just that I've just received an online Travel Health Plan, as it was suggested by my doctor to do so. It's good news, there's nothing that serious in the North of France and as I don't plan on doing any extremely dangerous activities, I should be fine. I shouldn't forget though, some mosquito bites can lead to some sort of brain disease... fantastic. What a nice way to put the fear into people. You can get your own brief from this website. I'm just going to take a small, and I mean small, first aid kit. Probably only really consisting of diarrhoea tablets and insect repellent as I'm sure things like plasters and painkillers are pretty similar on the continent.

For my university, I had to fill in a risk awareness form, which was more tedious than anything else. I've not been able to completely it properly as I still don't really know where I will be going, but I've told them I'll post an updated copy to them. I'm sure they get the same problem every year. The form required me to think about acclimatisation, crime and cultural differences. I tried to not be too sarcastic by reminding myself that this is the same form for everyone; no matter where they're going or what they're doing for their Year Abroad. With regards to the climate section, I just said I presume the weather would be the same, but maybe with the possibility of decent snow.

The crime section has me looking at the (Foreign and Commonweatlh Office) FCO's website, where I learned that there are a lot of recent theivings and attacks on the metros and RER lines in Paris. This is actually useful as I am going to Paris next week for Paris Pride. Pride. That's a fair point, the final issue from this form which I'll discuss, is the cultural differences in views of religion, gender and sexuality. As an atheist, gay woman, this is definitely something of which I'll have to be aware.  I believe I concluded to something such as 'as long as my responsable doesn't know or care, then I'm not too bothered what anyone else thinks'. Which is pretty much how I feel, I don't plan to be shoving rainbow flags down theirs throats at every opportune moment, just as I don't do so back here in the UK. Here's one now, though.
All I can do really is sit here and wait for my arrêt de nomination, the letter from France stating which school I'll be working in. It's so frustrating. I know people in the Rennes region who've heard but they're not from the UK, and then I know people from home who've heard but they're not going to Rennes. I JUST WANT TO KNOW. Dammit.

Monday 4 June 2012

A Fruitless Search

I've started to look for accommodation, even though it will be rather pointless considering I don't know the precise location of where I'll be working. It's so exciting though. I've just spent over an hour scrolling through www.leboncoin.fr clicking on all the decent-looking advertisements for flatmates. It would be scary to live solely with French natives or with foreigners with whom the mutual language would be French. My brain would implode! Yet, it is what I'm supposed to do on my Year Abroad, I'm meant to completely immerse myself in the francophone culture. I guess, I'd just like to know one English speaking person, a bit like a safety blanket. There's some beautiful apartments with fantastic views, but I can't do anything about it really. Not until I hear from the school I'm working at; it is then and only then when I can 'hop over' to France and run around seeing these places for real.

For now though, here's a picture of La Place de la République.
I've just been told that, at a guess, the city of Rennes is about the same size as my home town, Leicester, so that's not bad at all. Quite a decent size, but not terrifying big. Now I'm just 'walking' around the city on Google Maps, which I have to say is such a fantastic resource for this kind of thing. As soon as I know the address of my placement, I'll be looking it up on there.