Au revoir France

Yesterday morning marked one of the hardest thus far of my year abroad experience. After catching a modest two hours of sleep (if one can call lying down in a depressed state sleep) I caught some farewell hugs from my flat mates and set off to L'aéroport Lyon-Saint-Exupéry accompanied by my excess luggage.

I'm no stranger to red-eye flights. However, as I exited the apartment I had called home for the previous five months the financial saving of travelling at such a godforsaken hour was doing little to lift my spirits. In an attempt to disregard my feelings of general crappiness I tried instead to focus my efforts on how I was going to talk my way out of paying for surplus baggage. Successful to an extent yet once cleared through security I was again left alone with my retrospective thoughts. Staring at the departure boards I began to feel like I leaving home. As I touched down in Madrid I couldn't bring myself to think of anything else but what I had left behind.

While preparing for Erasmus I had always liked the idea of writing a year abroad blog. However, shortly after arriving in Lyon I felt less and less inclined to admit that my stay was on a temporary basis. I felt like I had built a life in this strange new 'monde' with a wonderful circle of friends: none of whom I was ready to leave. Unfortunately the time had come to say goodbye to Sciences Po: the university that makes the administration involved with filing a tax return look like child's play. Goodbye to the staff of Cool & Bed who played the role of my family during my first two weeks in France. Goodbye to the nation whose inability to correctly use escalators and walkways (stand to the side as opposed to the in middle) confounds even the most leisurely of us Brits. Goodbye to the awkward opening times, la salade Lyonnais and the fierce but unique sense of French patriotism. Au revoir Lyon, tu me manqueras.

My arrival in Valladolid has signaled the beginning of a new chapter and I feel predominantly upbeat. My time in France taught me more than I care to remember and that is precisely why I have decided to have a crack at documenting my experiences. After a single day I have successfully moved into a new apartment with two Spanish girls and one Frenchman (the latter is proving incredibly useful with my default language now firmly set on French) and have already attended a first division football match between Real Valladolid and Bilbao. Not bad for a depressed expat.