Four posts
in and I need to talk about settling in again. By this I mean re-settling. Like
many students on a year abroad – or those lucky enough to be within a fairly
cheap plane journey home – I decided to go back home for a few days at around
the ‘halfway to Christmas’ point (though if my festive excitement is anything
to go by, we are very close to
Christmas… please don’t burst my bauble and contradict me). A little warning
though you’ve probably guessed it … going home can actually be bittersweet.
It
depends on your situation of course but if, like me, you live on your own
abroad, you might just spend a fair amount of the weekend at home feeling a little miserable
about going back to a much lonlier environment. It doesn’t help that being home
for a very short time means you probably pack in as many friends and family
members as possible and you end up with a bumper weekend during which you see
more people than you normally would in a month. Saying goodbye to all this along
with the comfort of getting to speak your own language for a little while can
be even harder than leaving the first time round when you weren’t so aware of
what you’d be missing or how nice it would be to have a conversation with
second guessing yourself for language mistakes.
So what can
you do to combat this? Well, first I would say that being prepared is
definitely useful - admitting to yourself that you might end up feeling shaky
is better than letting it creep up on you. Second, plan some things to do for
when you get back so, as in the initial stages of moving away, you keep busy
and help the first few days to pass until being back starts to feel normal
again. Third, and very importantly, don’t feel ashamed. It can feel embarassing
to essentially be a grown-up (well…)
and get what are pretty much the Sunday-night-back-to-school-blues that you think you should have left behind you. To be honest, this isn’t
a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing. It most likely quite simply means that
love your home. Of course, everyone’s situation is different but there’s
nothing more natural, and therefore less worthy of embarassment, than loving
and missing what is familiar, comforting and easy. Going away again therefore
is difficult but also makes going home again, whenever that might be, even more
special. So push yourself where you can (a year abroad doesn’t last forever),
keep trying to make the most of it (a year abroad doesn’t last forever) but
remember to reward yourself from time as you’re doing something pretty
impressive (a year abroad can feel as though it lasts forever!).
On a
sweeter note (please excuse the earlier ‘bauble’ pun … or embrace it … your
choice), my number of petites sweet
treats (‘tis the season for cross-language rhyming) continues to grow and
to flourish: CROISSANTS: 2, CHOCOLATINES: 7, TRESSES: 2, BRIOCHE (homemade to
perfection by my generous boss!): lost count.
p.s.
Bordeaux specific warning: keep 20€ in your purse for emergency taxis (mum’s
advice … faultless as ever but don’t tell her) as the only tram that goes anywhere
near your house (yes, Tram B direction
Pessac Centre I am talking to you) might decide to take a break just when
you need it late on a Sunday night when you don’t really fancy a half hour walk
through the deserted streets across the city. Service terminé is not really what you want to see up on the board
when every other tram line around is still running for another hour (as it should be Tram B!) but that seems to be
the way things are and far be it for TBM to give an explanation for this inconvenience
(for which the board does not apologise).
Anyway I would like to thank my mother (whose advice I followed) as well as the
Bristol flat-mates who used to proof read my writing and alerted me to my
enthusiastic over-use of brackets and ellipses (whose advice I did not … vive les parenthèses!).
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