Bienvenue, 2014!

Bonne année, tous le monde! It's now 2014, and yesterday I caught the Eurostar back to Paris after a lovely, lovely Christmas at home with my family, filled with presents and turkey and lots of wine and Mount Gay Rum. 

I actually found it a lot harder to go back than I did to move out here in the first place, perhaps because moving out here I was anticipating everything and now, to go back, I have a much better idea of what I'm heading towards.

Still, I can't spend to much time brooding because this month is exam month, boooo. That's actually been an adjustment of sorts of itself, because I've not had any January exams since I left college nearly 3 years ago. I didn't manage to get much work done over Christmas, and what I did manage wasn't very effective - so I've got a lot of knuckling down to do for the first few weeks of January. 

On the plus side, I will have a week off when they finish before my new courses - still to be decided upon - start, so that will be good and will give me a chance to regroup and do a little exploring around Paris, which I've not had a chance to do properly in quite a while.

This blog post is really just a bit of nothingness to gradually get back into the swing of things, but normal service will be resumed within the next few weeks once I get out and about. Plus, next month one of my absolute best friends in the world is coming out to visit me; I've got loads of ideas of things I would like to see and do in the next six months, and then there is my 'things to do' list to see about completing, or getting close to completing... so once things get going again I'll have loads of stuff to blog about in  2014!

Until then, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too, and Happy New Year :)

Vicky xx

Bonjour, Paris!

Today is my third day here in Paris so far, and my first (full) day in our lovely apartment in Paris' 13 arrondissement. 

My year abroad has officially begun!

Saturday and Sunday morning were, once me and my mum had dragged two exceedingly heavy suitcases + equally heavy hand luggage the 3km or so to our hotel, pretty good. We explored the area a little bit, visiting the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Élysées, and I found something dead cool really close to our flat...

Still, beautiful sights and interesting discoveries aside, it was really until this morning that it kind of sunk in that this isn't just a city break of whatever, this is my life now! 

And so far, I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Today, for instance, a man came to our flat to do the inventory, and the landlord came over to organise a few things, like the wifi - and my French proved to be rather lacking. To my shame, my flatmate had to do most (if not all) of the talking.

It worries me, seeing as I am going to be very reliant on said language over the next ten months or so. But... having said that, I still have three weeks before the induction programme at my Uni starts, which is three weeks to immerse myself and practice, practice, practice! 

And actually, when I think about it, I'm not so sure my problem is my French, but more my confidence in my French. In either case, both my language ability and my confidence in it are things I am planning to build upon considerably before my official return to the UK next summer. 

Tomorrow, I will be attempting to set up a French bank account, and I also need to go and get a pay as you go SIM card. I'm also hoping to stop by Notre Dame, which I have never seen before and can not wait to lay my eyes on. 

Now that I'm here, I'm obviously going to be getting up to a lot of stuff and that means more blogging! I'm hoping to update at least fortnightly from now on, and if will be more if I have enough to witter about, now that I'm a bona fide year abroader!

Last, I'd like to mention that my blog has been featured on Top of the Blogs 2013-14 on www.thirdyearabroad.com which is fab! If anyone is reading this and hasn't yet been on that website, I strongly recommend hopping over there right about now. It's got a ton of useful information as other bits and pieces on it.

On which note, I'll sign off for now. 

À bientôt!

Vicky xx