Northern England feels foreign to a southerner like me, and northern France doesn’t feel much different. I mean, my ears even popped about 5 times on my way up to York in the summer; clearly the only explanation is that it’s so far up north (forget logic). Last Monday I took a 7 hour train to Calais, meeting my family. My Auntie has a house in a tiny town (although I wouldn’t even call it a village, there’s no public transport?!) called Auchy-Les-Hesdin and it’s oh so French. Cute little boulangeries and patisseries and a tacky Thursday market to match. I’d begged my family to bring over some Robinsons orange squash and cadburys so I spent most of the 5 days munching on foods I missed, feeling patriotic.
Besides stuffing my face with British food, we travelled to Lille for a day. I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but there wasn’t much there. A few cool buildings, a fountain or two, and a courtyard outlined with cute stalls selling one hundred year old novels. Maybe I needed to do more research on the city to know where to go, but I kinda hoped it would be like Grenoble where you can just come across cool things during an afternoon stroll…
My obstacle of the week was having to explain to my Aunt’s French handyman that he didn’t do a good enough job on the kitchen - awkward. He managed to understand due to my excellent pointing skills and use of ‘ahh bof, je sais pas le mot…’ Nevertheless, he finished by telling me ‘Aahh Ev, tu parles très bien français!’ - okay, if that’s what good French is, then I’m going to frantically point more often. I almost cried with happiness; the assistantship clearly is as good an option for a year abroad than any other. Take that skeptics!
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