Hello everyone! Well, I guess I should write a welcome post for this blog, although I don't honestly know how often I'll be able to update it over the coming months! So for those of you that don't know me, here is my situation...
I'm a 22 year old final year student of French and Italian. This is my fourth year and it's the all-important one. The make or break year, the soul-destroying dissertation year, the year in which I will graduate and - please, no! - be released back into the wild! In less than three weeks my exams will actually start and I will have to prove that all that I have been working for has been worth it, that I wasn't asleep in those endless French grammar lectures, that I am aware that there was more than one Napoleon in French history... zzzzzzzz
Perhaps the greater challenge will be finishing my dissertation on Dante and showing the world that I have something new to say about the Divine Comedy! No mean feat given that every time I write down an intelligent thought, I find it a few days later published in somebody else's book. But I digress...
My life always feels like a series of random adventures. Things never go to plan, my decisions are never easy and I often find myself wondering how I got to where I am. But that's how I like it, even though it's taken me a long time to realise it. Before I came to University I took a gap year in Italy, and in my third year of University I did an Erasmus placement in France. These chapters alone are full of strange stories! I will maybe tell some of them when I have little else to write about... what I will say for now though is that they gave me a taste for life abroad! I want to see the world and experience as many different cultures as possible, but how to do this when I am but a poor student?
I will just have to work my way around the world! This is the realisation I came to a long time ago whilst working as a shop assistant aged 16 in the bedlinen department of a large store. They paid me £3.10 an hour. Poor times. So after working as an au-pair (sort of) in Bergamo and volunteering at a charity just north of Milan, then studying in Grenoble and sunning myself on a few family holidays to Greece, I decided to broaden my horizons a little. I feel like I've seen enough of Europe for now (as long as Ryanair exists I'll only be a short hop away from most cities)... what I really want to do now is see something of Asia. Or to be more specific... Japan!
So back in November I applied to become an assistant language teacher on the JET programme. I didn't think I'd stand a chance of getting in as my Japanese stretches to 'a green tea please' and there were so many applicants this year because of the huge drop in graduate jobs. However, fast forward five months and an interview at the embassy in London, I now have a letter offering me a place on the programme! Sorted! So in a few months time I'll be off to Japan, learning Japanese and teaching school kids to speak English.. and this is where I'll write all about it. Stay tuned!
