'Tout est possible'

Bonjour tout le monde!

Je m'appelle Libby, je suis une étudiante anglaise, j'etudie le français à l'Université de Nottingham. J'ai commencé mon année à l'étranger cette semaine. Je suis installée dans la region de Bordeaux pour devenir un assistant d'anglais à Langon, dans le lycée Jean Moulin et le collège Toulouse Lautrec...

[And for reasons of wide-spread public inclusion and deliberate avoidance of grammatical humiliation I shall continue this blog entry in English until further notice...]

I am here. I have made it.

[evidence of the above statement]

On Monday morning, Dad accompanied me and 20kg of my life's possessions (after multiple 'guess the weight' debates between the family, the 'weigh before you drop' facility in the airport lobby was the best £1 we spent; my bag came in at a miraculous 19.2kg- unashamedly, there was celebratory air-punching) across the Channel.

Once we hit French turf, the blissful sunshine (merci, le Sud!) washed our previous plan of tram/train/taxi transportation down the figurative drain... the prospect of a road-trip upon far-stretching auto-routes was all too romantic for us to ignore- off to Enterprise it was (first attempt at French negotiation, complete)! So, once the left-hand drive was navigated (sorry, Dad), we were off- and the next important step in my French adventure was just (down the auto-route, through some tolls,  through a couple of roundabouts, off a few side roads and then eventually...) round the corner; the meeting of my French fairy godmother of the logement world, Sylvette. 

You see, after a months' ordeal with various 'collocation' sites, September had arrived and I was still sans logement- a fate that many assistants face, it is true... but for a person of my disposition (I like to know things) and the frets of my parents ('A hostel?!') my cosmopolitan Bordeaux dream of sipping café au lait with my 'plein de vie' French flatmates seemed to be slowly slipping from my grasp... I went back to the drawing board. If this dream was not meant to be, then I could reinvent it! 

Every Summer for the last few years my family and I have stayed in a maison de maitre in a tiny village- St. Exupéry (for those of you who know Le Petit Prince, the writer Antoine de St. Exupéry is an exciting link!) - a few kms from Langon (who'd have thunk it?!). Yet, it was only this year that we came across an interesting little medieval village in between the two; St. Macaire.

Such a great clock tower...

So, being swayed by the memory of a chiming clock tower and old stone buildings, I put it in the search engine. I found a few appealing adverts (wholeheartedly adopting the 'YES' woman guise) and held my breath... it was a good day when Kim at appartager.com informed me that Sylvette had selected 'Nous pouvons discuter'! A few emails and a telephone call (I was brave) later, it was set; 'St. Macaire- j'arrive!' And it was a good move. My room is wonderful, the town is full of surprises and Sylvette, well, to quote her directly- 'tout est possible'. That says it all. 

L'aventure peut commencer!