Mum and Katie explore Rennes

So, I have returned from my first wanderings in Rennes! I have literally experienced the full spectrum of human emotion in the last few days, and so this post could get quite long and detailed...so I will make sure I include lots of pictures to keep you amused. Here's the first one: one of my favourites of the main square in Rennes.

Place Sainte-Anne

So after a day full of apprehension, anticipation and aviation, we (that's me and my primary support machine, my Mum) arrived at our hotel late on Saturday night, and then Sunday morning was taken up with visiting the church I'm planning to go to next year. I had - probably unhelpfully - placed a lot of expectation on this, but fortunately we found it easily, and everyone was really friendly. We managed to speak to almost everyone, which was amazing, and we were never left not talking to anyone...people were so great at coming up and introducing themselves! Because it's the middle of summer, a lot of families and most of the students were away from Rennes, but the few students I did meet were so lovely and welcoming, and lots of the couples turned out to either have family in England or often one of the pair was actually English, which was reassuring for me as they really understood what I was going through, and especially reassuring for Mum, as it meant there were some people she could speak English to! My French seemed to keep up which was a relief; I sometimes found myself searching for a word or struggling with a verb conjugation, and occasionally I had to ask people to repeat things, but other than that it seemed OK! No completely blank faces greeted me, so that's a positive.

We had been invited to a picnic with one of the families after church, which was so kind of them, but in the end I decided it might be best to just go back to the hotel for a bit of a break...even though church had really reassured me, it was all quite overwhelming and tiring being in a church service entirely in French, and - as often happens when I'm nervous - I was feeling really sick and just generally exhausted. So we went back and had a regroup and a rest, and then once I had recovered a bit we went for an explore of the city. We managed to negotiate the metro (it's not hard it turns out...there's only one line, but still, it makes you feel like a local) and then had a general wander round. The city itself was really nice...full of picturesque little streets, wide boulevards and old buildings, and it even has a quay like Exeter (not quite as nice though)! And a great mix of authentically French boutiques and shops like Lush and Body Shop. Also lots of shops my Mum recognised from her youth...some parts were basically like 1980s England. In the best way.

One of the old streets

La République

The river

The Opera House

We chose one of the many (seriously, there are hundreds) crêperies to have our tea, which was delicious...I feel I may be having a lot of crêpes in the coming months.

Me at our favourite crêperie in Place Sainte-Anne

Monday started with trying - and failing - to find a café to have breakfast, and so we ended up getting some food in a supermarket down the road.  We managed to find ordinary milk and...wait for it...TETLEY ENGLISH BREAKFAST TEA BAGS. I will survive my year abroad it seems, as we have found it is possible to make a decent cup of tea in France!! All it took was a bit of searching and English know-how...my Mum is literally a tea expert, so she perfected a French tea-making method for me.

After our breakfast, I must admit I had a bit of a wobbler. I just had one of those moments where I stressed that 7 months was a very long time, and it was all too different, and I couldn't deal with it. But Mum really helped me put it all in perspective...7 months will go very quickly once the first few weeks have gone, and we looked back at Freshers last year (see my blog post about it here) and how hard that was, but how happy I was once I had done it. For all the great 'God really carried me through this' stories, there had to be a 'oh my gosh I can't do this' beginning.

After that we got the metro down to the uni and had a little look round, and I have to say, the campus was so much nicer than I was expecting!! It had a lovely nice campusy-feel, and was really green, so that was a pleasant surprise!

The main building

I recognised this from the website!

We could almost be in Exeter...

My flat is literally 2 mins away (you can see the campus from my bedroom window) which is amazing, and the flat itself was great...really clean, everything's included, and my room was such a good size! Plus the landlady was really friendly, and she told me both my flatmates will be French, which is SUCH a bonus. Massive answer to prayer there! The rest of the day was really just taken up with looking round the area round my apartment, which had a great atmosphere as its slightly outside the main city centre, but still only 10 mins on the metro, and a big supermarket and shops nearby. It sounds ridiculous, but I was very excited to find home comforts like my regular moisturiser and shampoo, Pringles and Ben and Jerry's in the supermarket! It's the little things.

Ma chambre

La cuisine

So that's a summary of our weekend! Overall it was a really positive experience, and although I had my moments, for the most part it made the YA less of a completely unknown entity, and really encouraged me that I can actually do this. It's still scary, and much more real now, but I have 6 weeks to gear myself up before I start, and at least now I have some sort of feel for the city which will be my home for 7 months! I shall probably do a few more posts as I prepare to fly out, but until then, à bientôt. 

My little French 'appartement'

So I have some exciting news...I have a room in a shared flat in Rennes!! The way this came about is such a testament to prayer and God's incredible faithfulness: let me lay it out for you.

I'll start right at the beginning. I found a Newfrontiers (a UK movement of evangelical churches) church in Rennes - which in itself was amazing - and checked out their website. It looked fantastic. Not huge, but big enough, and with a real family atmosphere. They also had a good group of students, lots of different nationalities, and great comments from people who had found a temporary home and family there. So I got in touch with them, and one of the leaders replied...he was so friendly and helpful, and asked if there was anything they could do. I mentioned I was looking for accommodation, and he put me in touch with one of their students who is currently on a YA in Rennes but will be going home in August, and so would be leaving his room free.

This seemed like an obvious answer to prayer, and so after a quick email conversation with him, I contacted his landlady about the room. He had mentioned that someone else was also interested and seemed quite keen, so I decided to just bite the bullet and email the landlady asking about the room's availability, and then leave the rest to God. I prayed that He would show me the right place for me to be, and it seemed He did, because I got a reply from her just a few hours later. She said that although the room I was asking about was gone, she had another apartment which had rooms available; closer to the uni, and with the realistic possibility of having 2 French flatmates, which the other apartment didn't have. So I decided to take it!!

It's literally 2 minutes from my uni, and yet still 10 minutes on the metro from the city centre, and comes fully furnished and ready for me to move in, which is amazing! Plus all my bills are included, which means I don't have to worry about sorting all those things out when I arrive! So it seems ideal...very exciting! It's such a massive relief to have a room sorted out, as the idea of arriving in France with nowhere to sleep that night was pretty terrifying! The fact that the church seems so welcoming and family-focused is also such a blessing and encouragement, as it will hopefully not only give me a chance to practise my French with native speakers, but also mean I have a ready-made community outside the university in an environment which I am used to, and other Christians around to support me.

I'm hoping to fly out to Brittany in July sometime to check out the city, university and possibly my apartment, but until then, au revoir mes chéries.

My new favourite thing #2 (that's number 2, not hashtag 2)

Things I love right now...

1) The Musketeers. This absolutely had to be number 1 on the list, in fact I practically made the list just so I could talk about it. You know when you watch a film or TV show or read a book which is just so amazing it starts to feel like that's real life and your actual life is just a dream? (or maybe you actually have a life, and have no idea what I'm talking about...if so, well done you.) That is literally been my life experience for about 2 weeks now, with Musketeers. I have been becoming steadily more obsessed with this show since series 2 started in January, to the point that before the final episode I stopped measuring time by the days of the week and started referring to times by how far they were from 9pm on Friday night. I think my housemates were just as glad to get to T-1 day as I was by the end of the week! To my eyes, this show has everything you could want from a Friday night series; it's fast-paced, gripping, full of action and with storylines that really keep you on the edge of your seat, yet also has developed, likeable characters (as well as some truly brilliant villains) and real emotion. Add to that the amazing sets and costumes, great acting, incredible fight sequences and some GENIUS one-liners, and you're on to a winner. I'm now re-watching the episodes from series 1 (some for the third or fourth time) and have just ordered series 2 from Amazon, because despite the ridiculously high newly-released price, I just can't wait any longer to re-watch them.

2) cooking, and in particular Rachel Khoo's recipe for tartelettes. Since I've been at uni and now have to fend for myself, I have developed a real love for cooking, which is made worse in the holidays when I have more time/a bigger kitchen/someone else to pay for the ingredients. So far I have made lasagne (which I have attempted before at uni but it didn't go too well, so my Mum showed me how to do it properly!) for my family, and then last week I made butternut squash soup, which was not too difficult but still delicious, and really healthy! I used a Mary Berry recipe...I do love Mary. However my greatest discovery of this holiday has been raspberry and almond tartelettes, from Rachel Khoo's book My Little Paris Kitchen. I halved the recipe and made 4 tarts instead of 6, and added a bit of almond essence on my Mum's advice, but other than that these tarts are really scrummy. Sweet pastry, with an almondy, slightly caramelised filling and raspberries on top; what more could you want in a dessert?

3) writing with a quill and ink. I went to the Jane Austen house museum in Alton last week with my family - I would highly recommend it, the house and gardens have been so well-restored and there's the cutest little tea room opposite it, which has a great menu and a gorgeous little outside seating area - and bought myself a blue quill and a little pot of ink. Well actually I bought the ink from Hobbycraft on the way home because the gift shop didn't have any black, but that's beside the point. Although I must admit it's not as easy as writing with a biro, it's so much more fun and makes your handwriting look AMAZING, and I've been surprised at how long the ink lasts before you need to dip the quill in again. I'm now using it to make my revision notes, which, it's true, is making my mindmaps look a bit 19th Century, but is so far succeeding in encouraging me to actually sit down and do some work, so I'm going to carry on for now.

4) sitting outside with summery drinks. Now that the weather in Britain has finally realised it's springtime (it's April, and for me that means spring...it shouldn't be raining again until September at least) I can actually sit in the garden even in the shade and not be cold, which is so nice after what feels like a winter longer than the one in Narnia (which lasted 100 years for any of you non-Narnia fans, shame on you). Now that I'm at home and it is my Mum's card in use instead of mine after a trip to Sainsbury's, I am also really getting in to summer drinks. My current favourites are anything lemony, so Hooch, 'a sparkling alcoholic brew made with real lemons and natural lemon flavours' and Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Sparkling Sicilian Lemonade. Failing that, I'll just have plain lemon squash, which I make a bit more classy by using the picnic-stye glass bottle my Mum got me. Other classics are Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Sparkling English Elderflower Pressé (the names just get longer and longer) or a fruit cider like Kopparberg, to remind me of my second home in the West Country.

Year abroad - part 1

This is the first in a series of posts documenting the highs, lows and in betweens of my year abroad next year (eek! Still can't quite believe it!). Because I'm studying languages, I'm spending next year on a compulsory year abroad to improve my language and learn about the French culture from the inside. Think of me as an honorary Trojan, a window into the strange and complicated ways of les français. I have just found out that I got my first choice of university, and will therefore be spending around 7 months from this September at Université Rennes 2 in Brittany, northern France, and therefore thought this was as good a time as any to introduce my Frenchy year to my neglected blog!

I have become slightly addicted to YA (that's year abroad, not young adult...that would be weird) blogs in recent months, and can often be found perusing the Internet late at night for titbits of information about all things French; from how to find accommodation, to when to use certain idioms, and how to make the most of what everyone says is one of the most amazing opportunities you will ever have. I also want to document my memories, thoughts and emotions for myself, so that I can look back and remember what the beginning was really like by the time I reach the end!

So. What have I done so far. Well, up until Saturday 4th April 2015, I have...

• been to about 10 million YA talks at my home uni (Exeter) about module selection, the Erasmus grant, language acquisition and intercultural competence (their words, not mine)
• researched and applied for 5 French universities (the others in my top 5 were two in Paris, one in Nantes and one in Grenoble) complete with module choices for each one. This was a bit of a nightmare in that European unis like to keep their module lists very well-hidden just to keep themselves amused as we foreigners try and negotiate their websites, but I got there in the end!
• on finding out where I was going (yay!) I then completed a learning agreement, application form and got a certificate of language from my tutor, all ready to send off to France
• got in touch with a student who is already out there for advice on finding accommodation, which was amazingly helpful!
• got my travel insurance (which I really need to pay for actually....I'll do that today)
• done a slightly ridiculous amount of online research, including looking at colocation (the French word for flat shares) websites for potential flats and flatmates, researching the area, looking at churches, and starting a Pinterest board. The importance of the Pinterest board, of course, cannot be overstated; how else am I meant to start making everyone else jealous about all my cultural adventures?

There's already so much I could say on all of these, but I don't want to bore you and my future self to tears with lots of insignificant details which now seem completely essential but may turn out to be less so over time. So to summarise, my current thoughts on mon année française (sounds so much better in French...and it rhymes) are... (more bullet points)

• French bureaucracy is already living up to its infamous reputation of being a bit tricky, but with a good amount of research and WordReference it's not proving impossible yet...even if one of the forms I had to hand in Exeter said they didn't think they had ever been asked for before!
• I'm starting to get very excited by the prospect of lots of (real) brioche, French bread and cheese, having really cool photos to put on Facebook, conversing completely fluently with natives (obviously. Or maybe not.) and trips to Paris, Versailles (which I can't wait to visit) and various other locations in Europe to visit my other friends embarking on YAs (that makes it sound like I have a friend staying in Versailles...that would be amazing, but alas, untrue)
• I'm also completely terrified by the prospect of finding accommodation which is close to the uni but also in a good location in the city, and finding people to live with. Ideally I want to live with French students - as all our language tutors have told us that they can tell who has lived with natives and who has lived with other international students when their students come back to Exeter in fourth year - but if that proves impossible I want to try and live with either a French family or other international students as opposed to on my own
• I'm also terrified about many other things, including how I'm going to settle in to a completely new culture in a new language when my friends are mostly all together back in Exeter, how I'm going to deal with all the settling in jobs like setting up a French bank account and enrolling in university, and whether I will be ostracised by all French people due to my English-ness and terrible French, and therefore spend my whole year speaking English. Not ideal.

I will try and do another post soon with more details about all the things I'm excited about (for my own benefit as well as for anything else!) but until then...the adventure has begun!!

PS  I feel now is a good time to apologise for any French words I may drop in to this and any future blog posts. I know it makes me sound snobby and superior, but sometimes there just isn't a word in English. And if I can't use my language skills to make myself seem a teensy bit more intelligent than I actually am from time to time, what's the point?!

15 things you'll know if you're a language student

So I've decided to hop on the Buzzfeed-style-list bandwagon, and do my own list of things language students know...just because I am a teensy bit addicted to them at the moment, and I thought it would be fun to write. Everyone needs to have a good old laugh at themselves from time to time...


1) that awkward silence when you tell someone you study languages and they try out their one word on you...am I meant to laugh? Look impressed? Feign mock-ignorance? I just don't know

2) that nagging feeling that your degree is completely useless in your own country...

3) ...but also the elation you experience when you go abroad and realise there are other people who speak this language too; your teachers haven't been winding you up for the last 10 years, it actually exists

4) the resentment you feel for your parents for not getting their act together and bringing you up bilingual. I mean, how hard is it to just learn a second language?

5) realising how hard it is to 'just learn' a second language

6) that sense of superiority you get when people look over your shoulder and nod, and you know they have no idea whatsoever what you're writing. You could be writing about them for all they know

7) moaning about how ridiculous the language is with all your language friends when you're doing a difficult translation...

8) ...but defending it fiercely when a non-linguist tries to attack it. Who do they think they are? Of course the rule detailing when to use the subjunctive makes perfect sense...

9) WordReference is a gift which surpasses all understanding

10) treating languages like cards that you need to collect; 'I was thinking I might take up Russian ab initio next term...and then maybe try my hand at Mandarin...', and judging other linguists on how many languages they speak

11) knowing in a conversation with other English people that a word from another language would explain what you're trying to say much better, but not wanting to sound pretentious

12) the overwhelming desire to correct someone when they pronounce a foreign word wrong (it's 'wingardium leviosar', not 'leviosar')

13) coming out of a particularly good class where you said some amazing idiom in the target language and feeling like you're practically fluent

14) coming out of a particularly bad class where you forgot the present tense form of avoir, and considering transferring to Biology

and best of all...

15) talking to a native and having them understand, and knowing all those hours of awkward conversation classes and agonising grammar exercises were worth it

This beautiful simplicity

I've been struggling a lot recently with all the ins and outs of the Christian faith. Biblical and theological paradoxes, like how Jesus is fully man and fully God, how we are saved completely by grace not works yet should strive towards Christlike-ness, how we balance solid Biblical teaching and personal experience of God in our Christian lives…questions which often have no answer that we can possibly expect to know or understand. At least not yet.

We talked at community group about some of these paradoxes last week whilst looking at a passage in Galatians, and I talked about a mini revelation I once had when having a shower (when all the best revelations occur…well, then and when brushing your teeth, of course). My head was buzzing with different opinions I had come across about these issues, and I asked God who was right. I mean, somebody has to be…that's the way it works, right? He replied 'it doesn't matter who's right Katie. Don't worry about what other people believe and comparing yourself to them; you follow me' (just like He says to Peter at the end of John 21).

I'm not saying we should all stop discussing the Bible and the issues it raises; that's one of the best methods by which to understand it better, by wrestling with it like this, but often I get so caught up with   trying to work out the 'right' answer, that I miss the whole point of the Bible. It all points to Jesus, and what He did for us on that cross. And as Isaiah 55:8 says, we can't ever totally understand God's thoughts through our own anyway…they're on two completely different planes. It's like we spend our whole lives trying to work out the exact dimensions and physical properties of the man-made box which we put God in…I think we will get to Heaven and discover it's not a square box at all, but a circular room. Or like an ant trying to imagine London, but imagining it as being underground. We have such limited experience here on earth, and I think we will get to Heaven and realise not only did we not have the right answer, we weren't even asking the right question. God must be sat there saying to us, 'what are you doing? You're going the complete wrong way! You spend so long worrying about all these minor details, you're missing the whole point of what the Bible's there for in the first place'.

As I realise when I listen to really good worship songs, our faith is beautifully simple. It's all about God paying the price for us, and breaking all our chains. Lines like 'You did it for me, you did it for love' and 'my sins are washed away'. We need only to give our lives to Him, and pursue Him whole-heartedly (maybe the word 'only' is a bit misplaced there actually). But you know what I mean, it doesn't need to be so ridiculously complicated all the time. Yes we should never stop seeking the answers, but theology and intellectual thinking is only truly valuable if it is helping us to love God more. Otherwise, it gets in the way of our purpose, and Jesus' two primary commandments…love God, and love others. Yes, love can be the most complex thing in the universe, but it comes down to this simple truth:

The Creator God loves me enough to send His son to die for me.

And I will choose to base my life around this alone, because it has always been, and always will be, enough.

Imagined communities

I had a seminar last week where we talked about the concept of 'imagined communities'…basically the idea that there's no such thing as a genuine community in today's society, because we have so few face-to-face encounters with people, and that all our group identities come from 'imagined' communities. For example, every time the Olympics come around everyone is glued to the TV screen and shouting encouragement at athletes who can't hear them, like crazy people…and why? Because we want Team GB - I'm starting to feel patriotic even just saying it - to do well, and because we identify with Great Britain as a nation. But how many people in Great Britain do we actually know? Less than 0.01% (and even that is assuming you know 6400 people…no one's that popular). Even the way we want to standardise, define and protect our national languages comes down to this desire to share something with others in our nation, and distinguish ourselves from other nations. It all comes down to the idea that all communities are actually products of our imaginations, formed by shared interests between members and the exclusion of outsiders, to give us a sense of belonging and security. There's no such thing as a 'real' community.

How depressing.

Much as I respect the theorists who have put forward these ideas, I beg to differ. Yes it's true that we use language, nationality and other things to create a connection with others, and have a tendency to exclude others from these groups in order to make ourselves feel more included - this is a basic human principle which we can see in social groups everywhere. But I believe I have seen and experienced a true community, where the members are bound together by the strongest connection there is, and which strives to be fundamentally inclusive, not exclusive. Someone at my church here in Exeter said the church as a body should be 'exclusively inclusive', meaning that we should be nothing if not inclusive of all people. We should strive to love each other as Christ loves us - which is a lot - but also seek to love people outside our little clique which is the church just as much, and draw them in to our unimagined community.

When we're scared, we as humans seem to do one of two things (or most of the time both simultaneously, which never works…good one guys); either push people away out of fear and an instinct to protect ourselves, or blindly reach out for someone to hold on to. But what about when the people we reach out for don't catch us? Is that why we're so quick to shut down in order to protect ourselves? How do we change that instinct?

There are many things I'm passionate about, and one of the biggest is the church and community. I could never fit all my thoughts in to just one blog post, so consider this an introduction to what I hope will be a series of posts on people, belonging, church, relationship and how we find God in all of this. I'll talk about what I love about different communities I've been part of, what I struggle with, and what I think God has said to me about it all over the years…hopefully all in a concise and non-blabbery way. Hopefully.

I hope you enjoy it :)