Eight things I've learnt whilst living abroad (using gifs)

1. Not everyone gets your sense of humour (although that happens to me at home, too).

2. It takes a bit of time to settle in. That's normal and it's something you have to get through. You might think, why have I left all my friends and family at home? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? But doing something different is good for you.

3. You're not going to understand everything people say to you which means you have to weigh up the decision of whether to ask them what they mean or just nod.

4. There's loads of admin to sort out like setting up a bank account, getting a foreign sim card and registering as a resident. It all takes twice as long as it's in another language. 

5. You find out that football, and not English, is the international language. 

6. You spend more time with other nationalities which makes you more open-minded, confident and tolerant. 

7. You learn that when you're forced to, you can become independent. 

8. And finally, you learn to love what the locals drink and eat. In my case...

"I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

Summer. One of the best things in the world. And for the first time ever, I'm spending my whole summer away from home, but that's okay, because half of it will be in Germany's sunniest city and the other half on the French Mediterranean coast in Montpellier. Ça serait formidable.

Every year I get this budding excitement about the summer because even once you've left school for university it still seems rife with possibility and free of responsibility. This is the very same feeling that distracts you from doing your revision or writing your dissertation, in favour of watching videos of your favourite bands at summer festivals on YouTube or working out if you can afford to go on holiday. 

On Friday I arrived back in Freiburg after being away for a ridiculously long semester break, expecting sun and warmth and getting rain, and lots of it. I'd left the UK's mini heatwave, most of which I'd spent sitting in the garden by my newly-dug pond (which now has at least three fish and a frog, gotta love nature), for rain! Luckily that passed over quickly and Saturday was blue sky and warm breezes. It hasn't changed from that for the last two days either. April's warmth, like October's, always brings out the debate in your mind of trousers vs. shorts. Do you embrace the heat while it lasts and go home as the sun goes down a little chilly? Or do you put up with being too hot and feel smug about wearing trousers when it starts getting cold in the early evening? A debate you will have no doubt encountered and one you thought was too uninteresting to put in a blog post.

So the next few weeks hold some things of interest. As every third year Southampton languages student will (definitely) know and (probably) be panicking about, our Year Abroad Research Project is due in two weeks. I have to say it's a relief to be writing this in English. Once that's done it's summer as far as I'm concerned. Then on my birthday, 7th May, the UK Government has decided to hold a general election as a 21st birthday present for me. And people say David Cameron isn't kind.

George x
P.S. Anyone know where the opening quote is from?!