Coffee, Lemsip, Gin

So after a rather lazy morning, I met Tom (pictured) for a coffee and a lemon and poppy seed muffin (ERASMUS grant, can afford muffins for once!). Tom is a language assistant in Charleville-Mézières Charleville-Mézières and also working in a collège. His town is a lot smaller than Caen, and I know especially during the first few weeks that made him feel especially isolated.

Luckily everything worked out fine once he started meeting other language assistants, pretty much the same as everyone to be completely honest. You go thinking that you will not speak any English and only make friends with French people, but the cold hard facts of it is that there are not that many French people your own age who want to spend time with someone who can't fully join in due to language issues. I know that I thought I would go out and find only French people, but truthfully I am more than happy having a mix of different cultures and people, makes everything so much more interesting.

Anyways it was so lovely to catch up and see where he is having his problems and where he feels he is succeeding. Although we speak most days on Facebook, it isn't the same as actual human contact! We seem to both have similar issues with language, and the frustration with knowing what is going on around you but not able to formulate sentences quick enough to join in completely.

In the evening Andy and I went out to Gatecrasher Birmingham for Matt's birthday. We both had a cheeky Lemsip in an attempt to control the symptoms of illness that is encroaching for me and has definitely taken over for Andy! Despite feeling a bit icky, was an amazing night. A brilliant group of people, and I got to know a lot of people a lot better than I had before. Was also great to finally go out out...now by this I mean an English night out. And yes, I went the whole hog - sparkly dress, false eyelashes, the lot. The best thing about it was that this is, of course, totally normal in England unlike France...so I could finally go on a night out where I made some sort of effort in my appearance! Didn't get home until 4am, so tomorrow will definitely be staying in bed as long as possible...