I’m halfway through my French Adventure now – my work contract tells me that I run out of job on the last day of May, and my flat contract ends on June 6. Paradoxically, time is both speeding and crawling by. In one sense I feel like I’ve been here forever and in another sense like I have only just arrived.
My French skills are very much improved; I’m not sure that the people I share an office with would agree wholeheartedly, but I can perceive the difference myself. Every now and then, in conversation, I do something surprising (like use the futur antérieur) and I want to stop the conversation and go “See what I did there?”. Although just as often I’ll be talking with one of the people in the lab and someone will start giggling at my construction (I tell myself it’s a good sign that I’m trying to make these more complicated sentences). Yesterday there was a long conversation about how and whether you could cite a paper that had been submitted to conference A in another paper to be submitted to conference B, but when the submission date for B was before the conference for A (although the conference itself was after). Of course, it all comes down to the dates the respective conferences announce their decisions. And of course, trying to express this in French took a bloody long time, but we got there in the end (with the aid of a timeline drawn on the whiteboard). I’m utterly useless at understanding French when there’s any background noise though.
The second half of my time in France is likely to be very different to the first. For a start, the flat is sorted so I’m not going to have to go to Ikea again unless I really want a cheap hotdog or breakfast for 1€. I know my way around (so I’m not going to waste an entire Saturday trying to find fresh coriander or brown basmati rice). And I think the worst of the admin is done, so I don’t expect to be baffled by many more forms before the time comes to leave.
And the weather is beginning to close in – I can often see snow on the foothills as I cycle in in the morning, and soon there’ll be snow in the city itself. I’m not sure how it works with the cycle network, maybe they grit them and I’ll be able to continue doing things by bike, maybe I’ll have to look into tram passes. It’s definitely getting cold though, and soon I’m going to have to find someone to teach me how to snowboard.