A Russian Abroad: 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