I graduated with a degree. I wanted to travel. So naturally, I am in France (again).
I decided to move to France for the next 8 months.
I first decided to move to France in December 2018, when I had an hour long conversation with my French advisor Andrew at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That day when I went to the French house, I went with the intention to declare a French Major as a second semester senior (in addition to my other major). At the time, I was currently declared as a Human Development and Family Studies Major in the School of Human Ecology and I plan to talk more about in a different blog post.
Okay, now flashback to me coming back from France in May 2018 when I studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence. I returned home from France and I was supposedly supposed to be done with French classes forever. I had finished my certificate in French and that was my goal. However, I started to watch French films at home and downloaded duolingo just to continue practicing my French. Basically I realized I couldn’t stop wanting to improve my French. Since I had already signed up for classes in the Fall and I was taking a dense load (anatomy and microbiology yay!) I decided to not add any French classes.
Now flash forward to the meeting with Andrew. We talked a
lot about where I was going and what I wanted to do with my life and basically my main goals were the following:
1) I want to travel.
2) I want to continue to improve my french.
3) I want to help others.
4) I need time to figure out how I am going to do number 3.
So basically this lead to him telling me about TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in France) which he did when he graduated from college. He basically said that I would have lots of time on my hands since I only work up to 12 hours a week and it would give me time to figure out exactly what I want to do (whether that is nursing or teaching). Becoming a french teacher was something that was always in the back of my head but I have always been so interested in the body and health that I pursued a nursing track (well sort of) in college. I will talk more in another post about what my degree in Human Development and Family Studies actually means to me. Anyways, so what I derived from my conversation with Andrew was that this program was a perfect fit for me.
Come January, I apply for the TAPIF program and I decided to apply to 3 different regions: Lyon, Lille and Amiens. I chose these 3 because Aix-en-Provence was in the south and I wanted to explore a totally different part of France that I had never been to, also I wanted a close train to Paris because well...Paris! Also, in January I got another job and started tutoring/nannying 3 young boys in French near Madison because I wanted to make my application to the TAPIF program stronger and gain experience in teaching.
So after my application and everything I received an email at the end of April saying I was accepted to the académie de Lille! I was so happy to know where I was going to be in the next year because if I didn’t get in I was going to have to figure that out ASAP.
Fast forward to the summer, I went to Chicago got my working visa for France and booked my flight for September 18th. I was so excited and thrilled to have everything in place and to do the darn thing!
In present time, here I am at a cafe in the center of Lille and I am writing my first post. I just got back from a short trip to Paris to visit a friend (s/o Matt) and here’s to the next 8ish months of figuring out what I am doing with my life! Oh and of course working and teaching English ;)
À bientôt!
Kristin
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