La tristesse est...

Goodbyes are hard.

New beginnings are often described as painful endings.

This morning was packing, and saying goodbye. Not what you really enjoy doing. I must admit getting tearful quite a few times today, including when I said goodbye to Thom but also when I said hello to Thomas. Yes, that is right, today I headed back to Caen…shown probably by the picture of Thibaud back in chez Coloc’. Not a long visit unfortunately, but at least I managed it!

The train journey to Caen was not a nightmare, in fact it was quite comfortable and I had quite a lot of things to catch up with. For my first train there was a plug socket that worked with an English adapter plug, so I spent the first three hours editing photographs that I hadn’t had the time to work on before. I then managed a quick stop off in Rennes for lunch and a coffee, and then onto another train direct to Caen. This train had a different plug socket setting, so couldn’t do anything with my laptop because my battery has the lasting power of a gadfly so ended up reading for another two hours. When I got to the station Thomas had come to meet me, and we ended up non-stop chatting all the way back to his flat (and much longer after that obviously!) where we met up with Flavie, Thibaud and Thibaud’s filleule (direct translation is goddaughter, but what it actually is, is a scheme set up by Caen’s Erasmus society in which French students help the new arrivals to find accommodation, open a bank account and sort out CAF…things like that). We all headed to Au Vélocipède for dinner, and made nuisances of ourselves asking for various condiments and only drinking tap water!

It was both strange, and delightful to be back. I no longer felt like an Erasmus student, and I no longer felt lost following only French conversations. The way that I could really see that was through the filleule of Thibaud, newly arrived, as I could recognise the look of incomprehension or not following on her face at times…as I myself have held that look on countless occasions in the past! She also asked how long it was before I began to understand and follow conversations, and my honest answer? I can’t remember. I was not really too much help to be honest!

The next stop was heading to an old haunt, Tour Solidor, for a long awaited pint of embuscade…that demon of a drink! Only one this evening, as everyone (bar me!) had work the next day, but we still had to head to Le Vertigo to see how the Erasmus party (Where everyone thought I was French!) was going before heading back to Chez Coloc’ to go to bed. Didn’t work like that as we ended up chatting for three or four hours more into the night. The meaning of ‘easy tiger’ was discussed, amongst other things! It is good to be back.