AWOL in Août

So this is my first entry for this blog.  I’m never sure what you’re supposed to write about in the blog entry really, but I’m going to use it as an introduction.

So, hello. My name is Micha. I’m a student studying French. Pretty much just your average girl.  I guess the reason why I’m starting up this blog is because I’m going to be starting my year abroad in…oh, 12 days time and was just looking for somewhere to write all about it.  And if I’m honest, I just want a place where I can write about a lot of stuff really, where potentially everyone could see it, but in reality, probably next to no one will.

Anyway, for the first seven months of my year in France, I’m going to be an English teaching assistance in a beautiful, charming and typically French town just outside of Dijon, in the Burgundy region.  Up until about two weeks ago I was getting pretty excited about this until I started looking for accommodation only to realise that finding anywhere to live was going to be much more difficult than I had first anticipated, which started to mar my happy-sunny-rainbow thoughts with clouds and scary goblins.

Not only is it more difficult than I first thought because there isn’t all that much on the market, but to top it off – it’s August.  To those who know anything about France and its culture, you’ll no doubt be thinking ‘Ahh, rookie error.’ Anyone else might be thinking: ‘What’s the problem with August?’  Well, France is on holiday.  The whole of France.  Not just some of it – the whole bloody country is on holiday and, according to the many people I have tried calling, ‘will not be back in the office until the 3rd September’.  While I absolutely do not begrudge people a summer holiday, what does irritate me is that I came back early from my holiday to find myself somewhere to live only to have forgotten the cardinal rule of not forgetting that France goes AWOL in Août (it’s my own fault that I forgot, but still).  Ah well, at least I know for when I start work there that they are a relaxed nation who take plenty of holidays (something I will take full advantage of this year, believe me. Uni ‘holidays’ aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when exams come straight after them and you’re trying to get 2:1’s and firsts). And luckily September starts tomorrow, hopefully bringing with it a flow of wonderful and overdue replies to all my letters, emails and calls * sigh of relief *.

Anyway, despite this minor hiccough, I’m just desperate to get there now and start speaking, thinking and living French.  It’s been all this time in the making and the longer I stay here in limbo, waiting to uproot for a year and venture to la belle France, the more my subconscious is lulled into thinking that this abstract idea of ‘the year abroad’, this allusive term which has been knocked around the halls of the language department for the last year and a bit, is never going to happen and is just that; an abstract idea.  And even though I now have a countdown going, I’m not getting nervous, or particularly excited or anything, because I just can’t convince myself that at the end of it, this is actually happening and that I am actually going to be leaving.  Which is why I’ll be happy when I’m just finally there with a roof over my head :)