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Eras-musing #3: A Team Effort

If you’re hoping to read a blog post filled with tales of wintry mornings spent in wood-panelled coffeehouses or of Alpine adventures on snowy slopes, I’m very sorry to disappoint. The truth of the matter is that I came back to the UK for Christmas, and due to the delightful combination of a mutant variant, flight bans, and our non-EU citizen status, became a little stuck. As I really don’t have anything else of value to add, and as that buzzword of latte-sipping millennials, ‘content creator’, comes to mind and sends shivers down my spine, I thought I’d collaborate with my fellow connoisseurs of the Year Abroad, and see what nuggets of wisdom and stories they might have to share, eleven months after we abruptly parted ways and embarked upon our European adventures. Or at least tried to.


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Hemma - French and Spanish student at Christ’s, cat-lover, and intern at the European Forum for Urban Security (EFUS), Paris

On my first day at work at EFUS I was pleasantly surprised to discover that we have an office cat: Tim, or Timmy to his biggest fans. No more than five minutes after I arrived, my supervisor suddenly turned to me and asked, ‘Oh by the way, you do like cats, right?’, and as if on cue, Timmy leapt up onto my desk from out of nowhere. He seemed to like me and would spend a lot of time lying on my desk in front of my keyboard, quickly becoming a regular feature on my Instagram. Less than 2 months into my internship, with Covid-19 cases skyrocketing and the anxious rumours of a lockdown looking increasingly likely, one of my colleagues raised the question of the elephant (or cat) in the room: who would look after Tim if there was a lockdown? As it turned out, I would. And so, on a random Wednesday night in late October, I found myself frantically googling nearby vets to buy specialist cat food (he only eats one specific type) in time for a national lockdown, starting the following night for at least a month.


With the lockdown being extended and my colleagues all having insane amounts of holidays, we have only recently gone back to having people in the office every day, and so one month of cat-sitting quickly became two and a half. Timmy made a great lockdown colocotaire (I live alone), entertaining and adorable if sometimes frustrating: running round the flat madly at 4am, miaowing outside my neighbours’ doors (and even going in their apartments!) when I let him out in the staircase, and frequently pulling my Christmas decorations off the tree. But he’d cuddle me in the evenings and sleep on my bed, entertain my colleagues by walking in front of my laptop in video meetings, and listen to me ramble at him in French in a desperate attempt to maintain my language level. His fan club has now extended far beyond the limits of EFUS, with nearly all my friends both here and back home as obsessed with him as I am. It’s safe to say that our family dogs are not best pleased...


So as chaotic as this Corona-Brexit Year Abroad has been, thanks to Timmy I have aged about ten years and fulfilled a dream I didn’t even know I had: becoming a 30-something Parisian cat-lady. He is now living in the office again and back to his usual antics of drinking from and knocking over peoples’ water glasses, half-heartedly chasing pigeons, and lying on my desk for cuddles. I miss having him in the flat, but with the possibility of yet another lockdown looming in the background I may get him back after all…

Either that or I’ll have to cat-nap him and take him to Barcelona with me.


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Sarah - French and Spanish student at Christ’s (although Corona mixed with my incurable laziness has really taken its toll on my Spanish, so I’m not sure I still classify as a Spanish student…), intern at LoungeUp, Paris


If you had told me two months ago that I, out of all people, would be one of the only two Christ’s MML students currently abroad, I would have laughed in your face, silent tears streaming down my face. Indeed, I was the last one to find an actual placement after all my plans were thrown overboard last spring. Instead of studying and travelling in South America I found myself doing – well, nothing. At home (in Düsseldorf, Germany). With Covid restrictions at an all-time high, preventing me from having any fun. Sounds almost as good as exploring a new continent, right?! So there I was, stuck in Germany (which, I guess, is a situation Anna would kill for right now), for a not-so-glorious five months – and that is excluding Easter term which was also spent from home. Out of boredom I brushed up on my French and Spanish, learnt some basic Russian as well as Irish, then spent the rest of my time forgetting all of it. I was taking my sweet time looking for a placement because I was still bitter about my initial plans not having worked out.


That is how “I’ll start working in France by October” quickly became November, then December, and finally turned into January, which is when I did indeed start my placement. The irony of it all was how sudden and stressful the transition was, after I spent months theoretically preparing for it. Because in true 2020/Covid/Year Abroad fashion (the only troublesome factor I can leave out here is Brexit because I, for one, am still an EU citizen) my job offer was confirmed one week before the oh-so-beloved Year Abroad Office closed for the holidays. And, of course, they would need all my paperwork before I started my placement and, of course, they would not reopen until the day I started my placement… what else did I expect from 2020? After months of having all the time in the world, I found myself frantically filling in forms, signing contracts and getting the two involved parties to move faster. I know it’s hard to believe but the Year Abroad Office was actually replying faster than my employer, which is a wonder in itself as you know if you have ever had the pleasure of communicating with our faculty, but I guess at the end of the day no one can top the relaxed laissez-faire, three-hour lunch break, shrug-of-the-shoulder-while-saying-‘bof’ #mood of my French colleagues.


I am now one month into my placement and despite Covid restrictions am really enjoying life in Paris and feel very grateful to finally be abroad at all (sorry to the rest of you who got stuck in the boring old beautiful UK). The last thing I have to say, and listen up future Year Abroad-ers, is that the French we learn in school and at University is utterly useless in everyday life in Paris. What with all les craqueheads at the Barbès-Rochechouart métro asking me for cigarettes, my flat-mates teaching me modern slang, and my colleagues just constantly swearing, I do not really have much use for my forced and out-of-place français soutenu or even just the standard language you learn at A-level.

But I do not want to tarnish Anna’s fantastic blog with my newly found foul vocabulary, so here is another unusual word I have learnt and come to love: frimousse. It means ‘doll face’ or ‘little face’ and is the name of my flat’s cat – who is even cuter than Timmy, just don’t tell Hemma I said that.


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Tara - French and Spanish student at Emmanuel, former intern at LoungeUp, Paris, and soon-to-be English teacher in Barcelona


You might begin to sense a theme when I tell you that I had planned to study in Latin America this term. My semester in Havana got cancelled a mere three days before my flight, which honestly serves me right for boasting about my sunny Year Abroad plans while most of my friends were struggling to find their way back into the EU. As the Year Abroad Office couldn’t do much in terms of enrolling me at another University (are we shocked?) and I had wisely given my old job to Sarah, I decided to do some teaching in Spain instead. Luckily, I found a job in Barcelona and am getting ready to head out next week. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful city and I’m super excited about the new job… and the architecture… and the beach… and the food…. On the other hand, I speak exactly zero words of Catalan. So we’ll see how that goes. I’m hoping that my French will help me learn faster, although it’s been a minute since my last apéro; I’ll admit that the 6pm curfew did complicate matters. I’m starting learning Catalan today and will enrol in an in-person class when I arrive – wish me luck!


It’s a tough year to be doing a compulsory Year Abroad. I’m fortunate to have spent the first part of it in Paris, excluding during Lockdown The Second, and I now know that it’s a bad idea to speak too soon when planning to move countries during unprecedentedly plaguey and woeful times. So I think we’ll leave the update there.

Dreaming of warm summer days on the Continent...

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