Life Goes On

Three days before my 21st birthday and I present to you another apologetic introduction for another late blog post which has actually been written in my mind for a while now but for which I hadn't found time to sit down and transfer to a medium that can be easily accessed by everybody else. The ends of events and periods in our life are always the busiest times as you suddenly realise that the finish line is fast approaching and yet you don't feel that you've done everything you wanted or needed to do. The title, meant to be the reasoning behind this delay, reflects my current pace of life which is rolling along faster than I would like as I try to profit as much as possible from a few weeks in Canada before running off to China for a month - A Russian Abroad part 3 if you will. From Bristol and Bologna to Canada and China (let's ignore Toulouse for the sake of example) maybe I should continue my traveling alphabetically so the next place I visit needs to begin with a D - an A-Z of A Russian Abroad...we'll see.

There are parts of culture that you really can only really experience by living with and going out with french students: the term 'fatigué' would normally be used as an adjective to describe someone who is tired. I can now never used that word without thinking of my flatmates using it more as an insult to describe someone who is a bit boring and a drag to hang out with - my flatmates would jokingly (I hope) ask me if I was 'fatiguée' that day... Going to a club for an end of year gala evening and seeing professors there with the students until five in the morning was a surreal experience. Don't they have a bedtime? And through exams, deadlines, and a flatmate's friend breaking up with his girlfriend I also discovered that red wine, bread and cheese really is the cure for everything.

Although I left Toulouse 2 weeks ago now and the last 9 months are a blur which could have easily been a dream, some last minutes thoughts have been lingering on my mind. I'm often asked if I feel english considering I've lived in England for most of my life or if I feel russian or canadian. I can definitely relate to english culture and the way of life but in the end of the day I still feel canadian and russian given my close attachments to my roots. However, as a good friend of mine said to me the other day 'sometimes I'd just rather spend my time with english people'. Fair enough. Is it the language, culture or way of talking to people that means that no matter how many interesting foreigners you might meet, at the end of the day, you sometimes just prefer to spend time with people from your own country where you've grown up? Yet even in Canada I find I miss english humour which is often lost on people here and I often have to repeat what I say, tweaking my accent so that people can understand me.

At the end of June I played in a concert just outside of Toulouse in a town called Mazères. I noticed that there were many older people wandering around the streets and then realised that in Toulouse I rarely see them. Toulouse seems to attract the younger generation - students, recent graduates and young families - which fuels the city's constant energy and then, when it gets too much, people leave to see out their twilight years in a peaceful, idyllic, french, countryside town.
Interestingly enough it was while doing research for my french essay about 'l'identité toulousaine' that I fell in love the city - about two weeks before I was due to leave. Quite a change from the indifference I felt towards it when I first arrived and was missing Italy. Talking to so many 'toulousains' meant I realised what a great city it is and the strong relationship people have with the history, culture and youthful dynamic of the city. Better late than never I suppose.

Anyway, life does go on. All good things must come to an end and now is the time to see if all the promises to visit and skype every week hold out. Canada has seen me doing yoga three times a week, cutting down trees, driving a tractor and swimming in the ocean every evening - a complete yet welcome contrast to intense, european city-life - and pre-departure reading about China is due to start any day now. What do I miss the most? Good italian coffee, long lunch breaks, fresh baguettes, italian ice-cream, french cheese and red wine (see above), italian hand gestures, La Garonne (the river in Toulouse), and french paperwork. (The last one is obviously a joke).

A big thank you to people who have read through my Erasmus experience with me - it's been an absolute pleasure.

Lots of love,

xxx 

Testing out my new camera

Spontaneous weekend to Florence and Bologna

Outdoor orchestra concert at Mazères

The Things I've Learnt

Ironically when I find myself the most inspired to write my blog is when I also find myself at my busiest with no time to sit down and share my experiences!

All the same, I'm now temporarily back in Italy with a few spare minutes to share my latest thoughts and experiences with you, all the while being grateful that my Italian hasn't left me since being away and that the city and the people (and the food) are just as great as I remember them. I was finally able to enjoy a truly good coffee after two months of the frenchies' failed attempts to prove that they can rival their neighbours and you can never go wrong with an italian cooking you a decent plate of pasta. Moving out of my house to move into a new apartment in a couple weeks time I found all my old italian notes from when I just arrived to Bologna with things such as "Che ore sono?" (What time is it?) and laughed at the fact I felt I had to write something down which now comes so naturally to me. It's encouraging to see improvement that's for sure - I really used to be so horrendously useless at Italian.

The other day I came across another blog post titled 'The Things We Learn From Strangers' and it reminded me of a flight I took from Texas to London a couple years ago in which I spent six hours chatting to the guy next to me who came from such a completely different background - a young dad of five home-schooled kids who had never left the US. Always (arguably unfairly) skeptical of americans from Texas and having had these views confirmed while waiting to board the plane at the gate I wasn't very enthusiastic when he struck up conversation and started asking question after question about life in Europe but six hours later my mind had been changed and I was left reflecting on his way of life back in the States. As this blog post says, you really can learn something from everyone you meet. Though I have met so many great people during Erasmus (and even before), how many people have I actually kept in touch with after our hour, day, week, or month of being best friends? Honestly, very few... but that doesn't mean I haven't remembered stories they've shared with me, things I've learnt from them or experiences we've enjoyed together.

Last week, my boss invited me to go with her and her husband to a private concert in Toulouse. Never one to say no to a free concert, especially when there's a piano concerto involved, I came along and found myself in the centre of the upper-class, bourgeois bubble of toulousain society. Turns out the concert was sponsored by big companies in Toulouse and so was essentially a lovely example of industry and culture in Toulouse coming together but I questioned whether the majority of the people there really had an interest in classical music or whether they were just there by obligation. Sat opposite the head of Toulouse airport, nearby one of the bosses at airbus and finding myself a few metres away from the new elected mayor of Toulouse during the interval I felt slightly out of place as a student wearing my denim jacket and trainers but certainly enjoyed observing the beautiful manicured wifes that they all had on their arms and realising that all the really important men seem to have incredibly big noses. Is that just a coincidence? My boss not really being one for cosying up to people and engaging in small talk about the weather and how Fabienne* and Jacques* from a dinner party months ago are doing, we greatly enjoyed people-watching from a distance while making the move to secure prime central seats during the interval.

A couple days later I was brought back to earth when I went to another concert of my own accord and was met with crowds of people outside and a completely locked concert hall. Ten minutes of waiting and listening to surrounding frenchies getting angrier and angrier about the lack of information, a window on the second floor opens and a woman pops her head out to explain that protestors somehow got into the hall during the day, haven't let the orchestra rehearse and are unwilling to move or even negotiate in order to facilitate the running of the concert. How bizarre. The french really do just strike or protest whenever and wherever they feel like it.

I recently realised how ridiculously easy it is to make a bit of pocket money teaching english. It's a language that an incredible amount of people want to learn and being a native english speaker means that people will jump at the chance to rack your brains for an hour trying to extract and take in as much of the language as they can. To this end, I decided to complete an online TEFL course so I do feel somewhat qualified to actually teach english even just for a couple hours a week. Some parts of the course involved considering different ways to teach the language in terms of whether to start with grammar, vocabulary, or to get people speaking from day one even without any exposure to the language. It made me think about teaching grammar - or even using grammar that I've learnt for my languages but then receiving the reaction "yeah but no one says that!" Well, why are we learning it then?! So it's 'technically' correct but the majority of the people speaking that language don't say it like that and don't really tend to use it in written language either. Who is this person who has decided that the most common form is the 'incorrect' one or the 'correct' one is the one that no one uses. Surely, the 'correct' way of speaking would be the way to most effectively express yourself in line with the current use and development of the language of the people you are talking to. Rant over.

I'm being summoned to make lunch and I haven't even got round to sharing my excitement for month of fun round 2 which is starting in no less than 29 days....

A la prochaine,

xxx


*insert any typically french names

A private tour of the Toulouse Observatory

Toulouse at it's finest on the first warm evening of the year

The perks of teaching english to children

Easter Sunday brunch in line with typical french traditions

The best way to learn a language is to fall in love.

I present to you a more insightful and pensive blog post as opposed to my usual ramblings of the activities which I deem to be worthy enough of recounting to my loyal readers, you have been warned.

My boss told me that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love. I think it's safe to say that my mother's english has certainly improved a great deal since she met my father and my boss is from Columbia but married a french man 20 years ago and her french is now perfect - so those are two good examples of her statement being true. This statement - which I heard at my first day of work - fueled a variety of different thoughts which I refer back to when thinking about my progress in language learning and my greediness to learn as many as possible without worrying about completely mastering one.

Firstly, do I even need to learn other languages? The majority of people that I meet from mainland european countries speak english - not fluently by any means - but enough that they want to benefit from an english person and carry out the whole conversation in that language. The other point is that I could easily decide to stay in England in my comfortable bubble and not worry about needing to learn languages to meet other people or understand foreign films/books (as are the wonders of subtitles and google translate) - there are already lots of interesting people in England, many of which I haven't met and I could bide my time staying there and just enjoying the occasional holidays in non english-speaking countries with citizens who can speak english already anyway. A very dear spanish friend from Italy asked why he needed to learn Italian when he would return back to Spain where everyone spoke spanish and he would live and work there. Fair enough.

Though this is the cynical side of me which appears when I see the hundreds, even thousands, of pounds/euros we spend on language learning and the difficulty of truly mastering a foreign language when you are over the age of about 10 - hmmm, maybe you really do need to fall in love to learn a language. It's cheaper and probably more enjoyable than sitting at home pouring over grammar books and useless lists of vocabulary with building amounts of frustration.

I initially never believed in "Culture Shock" - as my university puts it.

'Culture shock is caused by the stress of being in a new culture...a person with culture shock may experience some of the following symptoms: irritability, headaches or stomach aches, excessive concern with health, easily tired, confusion, anger, anxiety, and lowered work performance.'

I always thought of myself as flexible and easily adaptable but I have since learned that when I'm happy in one place and forced to move to another place full of the unknown and uncertainty, I'm much less so. 

I came across this realisation when I was asking myself why I had left a country full of people so relaxed who focused more on the time of their next coffee and what they would have for dinner that night than paperwork and rules, to a country full of people who seem to actively search for ways to create more paperwork for everyone involved. I had been to three different phone shops a total of 9 times over the space of seven days before I eventually found myself with a working french number and my regular stop-in at the bank every morning on my way to work for the first week or two meant that they stopped even bothering to ask my name and had all my details already up and ready.  This definitely gave me at least two or three of the symptoms listed above.

It also seems that the buses aren't "free" here as they are in Italy... meaning that everyone here always honestly scans their ticket upon boarding (this completely caught me off guard when I arrived) while in Italy you have the fun of keeping a suspicious eye on everyone on the bus to look out for someone who might be hiding a ticket machine under their jacket and waiting to catch you just after the next stop. 

Other than that, french bread is so much better - and in constant supply at the house of the family with whom I'm living. Though my body has had to adjust to the copious amounts of meat which seem to be a given at every meal - I was actually treated to one pasta, meatless dish which made me realise that french people don't know how to cook pasta. It's something that should be left to the Italians...or people who have had the fortune to learn from fellow Italians...I miss the fresh basil and parsley always in the fridge and used in the majority of meals and the simplicity of the dishes which could be whipped up in a matter of minutes.

However, I do have my security blanket which I fall back on in every new country. Playing in an orchestra is something I have always done since I can remember, and it's something that I know how to do relatively well and the basics don't change from country to country. Yes, some of the terminology might be different, however, I never have problems understanding what is being said and it gives me a breath of fresh air away from racking my brains for vocabulary I learned for A-level and which has since escaped me or trying to refer back to the lists of phrases which take or don't take the subjunctive.

Anyway, I have made lists of things I want to do in Toulouse before I leave and have already done the natural history museum (having taken advantage of all museums being free every first sunday of the month) and the cathedral in Toulouse which is one of my favourite cathedrals I have seen, so I promise a more activity, cultural blog post in a couple weeks time.

Lots of love

A xxx

A house in the french countryside weirdly dedicated to an indian guru

Toulouse Cathedral - summer made a brief appearance

Inside the cathedral - the organ looked so randomly place on the wall

Two for the price of one.

I have come to realise that being one of the lucky ones who has two erasmus experiences over the course of one year means I get to learn two languages, about two cultures, experience two different cities/countries and meet completely different types of people. So no matter how tough leaving one experience might be, I get to do it all again.

My last few weeks in Italy were packed with doing as much as possible accompanied by the odd panic attacks about going to France. Living in a city for just a few months, I saw parts of the city that residents of many years had never bothered to seek out because I felt the pressure of a time limit to get to know the city so I tried to do as much as possible. This included the interactive museum of the history of Bologna, the museum of the history of pianos, the music museum, going for sushi one last time, visiting all the little places which I had thought looked nice but never actually tried and saying yes to every invitation, not wanting to miss out on seeing friends that I would soon need to leave or missing out on more time walking around the city. Among all this I was introduced to a new italian word - cicisbeo - is a word from the 18th and 19th century which basically describes a companion for a married woman who would escort her around town and to various social activities when the husband is otherwise engaged. Now I'm definitely not married but when I found myself on my own, I did often call on the same two italian guys to accompany around town. In my last week I also discovered that the best place to visit in one's first week of living in a new city - no matter how much you might want to fit in - is the Tourist Information Office. I wish I had gone there every fortnight or so to find out all the latest information and things going on in the city. 

Taking advantage of discounted erasmus activities, I went skiing for the first time (cross-country skiing at the age of 3 doesn't really count). The first couple hours involved people getting more frustrated with me taking my time to come to terms with the concept and the technique. After a lunch break I found my rhythm and was having an incredible time. Why hadn't I discovered it before? I blame my parents. I got on the bus at the end of the day full of adrenaline and excitement for how well the day had gone and woke up the next day thinking about doing it all again. How many people can say they have gone skiing for a day in the north of Italy and then the next day taken a plane to the south - Palermo, Sicily. (Yes, this is the seamless link onto my next paragraph).

I was lucky enough to be treated to flights to Palermo as a christmas present and so I went there for five days at the end of January with my friend Giuseppe who is Sicilian and was very keen to show me the city. I learnt that Italy is a country with 60% of Europe's churches and an unbelievable amount of very diverse history. I was also repeatedly told that Sicily is the most beautiful island in the world and that the fact is undebatable - I would have to say it's the second most beautiful after Vancouver Island in Canada... I can't be disloyal. I saw 2% of Palermo's 250 churches, I learnt about Serpotta - a renowned italian sculptor from the 17th and 18th centuries whose work is all over Palermo and who worked with stucco* - and I sampled the delights of le arancine and i cannoli and a brioche with ice cream inside. I saw one of the most beautiful cathedrals I have ever seen - in Monreale and decorated entirely with mosaics - and I learnt that though I think I understand and speak italian - sicilian is a complete different thing...definitely not italian that's for sure. The city is beautiful but it seems that some of the people don't respect or appreciate their city. It's sad to see and hear about people throwing rubbish out of their windows and stray dogs all over the city. It is difficult to know where to start to help improves thing, maybe the education in schools in order to target the younger generation?

I left Italy feeling sad for having to leave a place in which I'm so happy and a culture with which I have completely fallen in love, but with curiosity for the new city and the people I might meet.

After a 20 hour coach journey filled with butterflies and the odd tear, I arrived to Toulouse. I'm very lucky in that I was met at the station by another stagiaire and treated straight away to lunch at my boss's house. The first thing I did in the afternoon, having learnt from Bologna, was to go to the office with all the information of things going on for young people in the city. I picked up a pile of leaflets and booklets about things to do so at least I won't be bored. I had already had a room lined up with a french 

family who are very welcoming and arriving in a new country with home comforts already set up is very reassuring. My second day here my boss invited me to join her and a couple of her friends to visit a lovely medieval town about an outside of Toulouse called Cordes-sur-Ciel which is very charming and was tranquil without the throngs of tourists which come with high season. A pleasant start to life in a new place - which definitely beats staying at home and wondering how I am going to make friends.

Having gotten used to italian culture and habits, it will take time to readjust however, on the plus side, I at least understand everything that is said to me (the same can't be said for my arrival in Italy and I didn't understand anything) even if my attempts to express myself come out more in italian than in french.

A la prochaine fois,

xxx

*stucco - is a special technique used for sculpture in which it is applied wet and so the sculpture must work very quickly to ensure he finishes before it dries. The finish is more refined and smooth and very light in colour.

Typical bolognese food - an outing with a cicisbeo

Stunning trees in Palermo

Beautiful mosaics

Blending in so well - I came prepared

Arab influences on churches in Palermo

The new way to eat ice cream and add to the calorie count