{"id":7747,"date":"2019-12-15T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/qut-exchange-students\/?p=7747"},"modified":"2020-06-16T13:48:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T03:48:01","slug":"how-my-experience-in-france-changed-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/gone-global\/2019\/12\/15\/how-my-experience-in-france-changed-me\/","title":{"rendered":"How my experience in France changed me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma – l’Universite Catholique de Lille, France<\/h3>\n

Semester 1, 2019
\nBachelor of Laws (Honours)<\/h5>\n

Leaving my comfort zone<\/h4>\n

I had never been so sad to leave home in all my life \u2013 I felt like my world was crashing around me. Six months? Have I completely lost my mind?! When I lost sight of my loved ones at the Brisbane International Airport, I was immediately a wall of tears. It was 9pm on New Year\u2019s Eve 2018, and I wouldn\u2019t see them again until the 27th<\/sup> of June the following year. What have I done ! I don\u2019t even speak French!<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t envisage the next six months without feeling a wave of terror. Yet, at some point between having my scissors thrown in the bin and posting a picture of myself at the departure gates on Instagram, I came to the resolution that I was not allowed <\/span>to be sad. Fastening myself into my seat on an almost empty plane I decided, definitively, that I must be excited from that point forward. I\u2019ve worked too hard, and spent too much, to let despair and fear cloud what would apparently be the best six months of my life.<\/p>\n

It turns out not much at home would change over the course of 2019, but my world would completely turn upside-down.<\/p>\n

Learning French <\/b><\/h4>\n

Exchange changed my life. I had always wanted to go on exchange in a non-English speaking country, for no reason other than I am a little insane. I learned French in high school (seven years ago) and for whatever reason, I thought that would get me through. I survived, but it was not thanks to high school French in the slightest. It was thanks to the most wonderful group of people I have ever met.<\/p>\n

Through a friend of a friend on Facebook, I had arranged to be picked up and looked after for the first two days of my arrival by a lovely host family in Belgium. I am forever grateful to them for easing me into European winter with warm fires, German sausages, Magnum ice-creams and \u201cold town\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meeting new people<\/b><\/h4>\n

When I arrived in Lille, alone, the knowledge that they were just an hour away by train stopped me from freezing on the spot \u2026 though not literally because I was underprepared for the weather. During my first days, I learned from one of the RAs (student leaders in my accommodation) that the kitchen was the best place to be to make friends, so from that point it was in the kitchen that I spent around one quarter of my entire exchange.<\/p>\n