{"id":10043,"date":"2019-10-18T13:48:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T13:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/?p=10043"},"modified":"2019-10-18T13:49:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T13:49:21","slug":"une-aventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/une-aventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Une Aventure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been in Rouen 20 days now \u2013 I can\u2019t quite believe it. I\nhave so much to share already! Let\u2019s go back 20 days, to when I was moving to\nRouen which feels like months ago already. I moved to Rouen on Thursday 5th<\/sup>\nSeptember. I was travelling on the Eurostar, through Paris and then onwards to\nRouen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I arrived at the CROUS accommodation office in Rouen at\n2.30pm and was directed to a room where international students were sat waiting\nto be seen to ensure all the paperwork was intact in order to collect their\nkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once it was eventually my turn, I was handed over my keys at\nnearing 5pm. My new Italian friend who was sat next to me in the accommodation\noffice was placed in a room further along the hall from me, so together we\nheaded to find our b\u00e2timent <\/em>(block). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My room is a fairly standard university hall size with an\nen-suite bathroom and also a balcony(!) and a very, VERY basic kitchen without\nan oven for the entire 18 people on my floor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first night was a strange one, it didn\u2019t particularly\nfeel as though I was abroad. Each day began to fly by as I met more and more\npeople, notably Erasmus students through other social events, including my\nfirst night out in Rouen! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actual university campus is situated outside of the city centre in the very green suburb of Mont-Saint-Aignan and there is a very regular busway system to the city centre. The city itself is stunning, featuring the Cath\u00e9rale Notre-Dame <\/em>and the cobbled streets, lined with medieval timbered buildings. I feel so incredibly blessed to call this city my home for this academic year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cath\u00e9rale Notre-Dame<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It feels almost bizarre that I have become almost completely settled into a routine already and am able to find my way around the city almost blindfolded. We have been very lucky with the weather recently and I have been on trips to Paris and the seaside town of Le Havre to go to the beach! I\u2019ve spent a ridiculous amount of money in my local boulangerie <\/em>of which I have been daily and indulged in fresh baguettes and all kinds of pastries. No words can express the upgrade in quality of fresh bakery produce in France compared to back in the UK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am now nearing the end of my second week of classes at the\nuniversity and every day it feels as though I am able to follow more and more\nin French. The actual content of the classes doesn\u2019t seem to be particularly\ndifficult however, simply absorbing it all in French isn\u2019t easy. I found each\nday extremely exhausting as I endured three hour lectures, having to\nconcentrate extremely hard to understand the content. There have been moments\nwhere the lecturer mentions something seemingly important and the class all\nstart to furiously scribble at their notepads, while I\u2019ve completely missed the\nsentence. I\u2019ll get better at this, I\u2019m sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently all my notes are in the new found language of\n\u2018Franglais\u2019. I have found myself on many occasion speaking English a lot of the\ntime, not just to other Erasmus students but to French students as well who\nhave expressed to me that they want to practice their English, but likewise I\nwant to practice my French. On the other hand, I have noticed a huge\nimprovement in my ability to understand spoken French, if only my production of\nspoken French was improving at the same rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m excited to travel France and continue meeting new people\nwhile watching my French improve. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been in Rouen 20 days now \u2013 I can\u2019t quite believe it. I have so much to share already! Let\u2019s go back 20 days, to when I was moving […]","protected":false},"author":1738,"featured_media":10048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[742],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-opportunities"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1738"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10050,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043\/revisions\/10050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}