November 4, 2013, by Guest blog

So far, so good

I think that when you ask people what do they think about travelling- most of them will say they love it. But when you travel and visit a country for a couple of hours, days, even a week, it is way different to when you live in that country for couple of months. Well, I love travelling. I am from Bulgaria, I study England, I have lived in Croatia and now I am in France.  It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  I think it is a natural thing, or even part of the process of adapting to a different lifestyle to compare everything to your country and think how this and that is done in your native country.

I think most of us experience some kind of cultural shock at the beginning of their stay in a different place. When I arrived in Nantes, France everybody was ready to help me with the directions to my residence, to help me in the store, etc.; all that things that do not look hard, but could be a challenge at some point. I study at a Grande école; therefore there are only 30 people in class during all the lectures. We are only 4-5 foreign students, all other students are French. At the beginning I thought it would be hard to integrate myself and make friends, but the group projects got us to start talking, then we started going for a lunch together, then for a drink on Friday night. I did not expect that. I was nicely surprised. We have a group page of our “class” and if you have a question everybody is ready to help. Nantes is not a big city, but it is the “green wonder of western Europe”- there are many parks and green areas near the river where you can enjoy the sun or spend time with friends. You can even do your homework there.  There a lot of monuments and places to be visited in France. I am glad that I met people from different cities and I travel around the country getting to know their culture, lifestyle and history. So far, I can say that French are lovely people. There were some problems, but I want to underline that my first impressions are all positive.

I can keep writing about my first impressions on and on but I think four hundred words are not enough to express my positive feelings for France so far. I like it here. As the saying goes: so far, so good.

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