Arriving in Slough

Hi everyone ! Welcome to my blog :-)

So, for those who would not know exactly what I’d been up to lately, brief summary. I came back mid-January 2008 from Melbourne, Australia, where I had the time of my life studying, travelling and partying. And meeting great people. But I guess everyone knows that already! So yeah, I came back to the lovely town of Lyon, France, where I finished my “Master 2” degree in English. I wrote a “mémoire” (the equivalent of an Honours’ thesis for you aussies ;-)) comparing American and Australian politics. I had no classes at all, just these 100 pages to write, so it was very hard to focus and do all the research on my own. But I made it eventually! Yay.

That was what I was up to these last few months. Now, I’m off again. To the UK. Slough, precisely, which is located west of London. I don’t know much about the city apart from the vague facts that it’s a big industrial town which was featured in one of my favourite British series, “The Office”. I remembered the poem about the city, written by Sir John Betjeman, in 1937

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Charming hey? I had a quick look at the “Slough” Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough) and found out Slough was also very ethnically diverse, which should be interesting. Many people laughed when I told them I was going there, wishing me good luck. Others reassured me saying it was not too far from Windsor, or London, and that the surrounding area was beautiful. We’ll see.

One sure thing is that it’s the beginning of something really new from me. That is, leaving my comfortable status of student in English to become a French teacher. Well, for the moment, not a proper teacher. Just a FLA: Foreign Language Assistant. My job description could be summed up as such: making my students (high schoolers aged 15 to 18) speak French. Talk about my language, my culture. I’m going to be working at Slough Grammar School, which, judging by their website, the brochures they sent me and the very nice e-mails from the staff, looks like a pretty good school! Therefore, I’m excited. And stressed, just a bit.

After spending a day and a half in Paris catching up with friends and family, I took a plane to Luton airport at 9 on Friday morning. I had a safe (and short!) trip, though I had to buy a bigger hand luggage because I was not allowed to have my laptop in a separate bag... I hate Easyjet and their stupid restrictions! (Erm, ok, that was the part "I’m-French-so-I-have-to-complain-otherwise-the-little-French-part-in-me-will-shrink-and-eventually-die") Anyway, I ended up buying the cheapest sports bag I could find in one of the airport stores to fit all my stuff in. The cheapest bag was also the crappiest. The zip is already broken. And my giant suitcase which had survived Australia also started to crack in several parts :-(

I eventually dragged my luggage to the shuttle bus station of Luton airport, where I took a coach to London, Victoria station. The trip was about an hour and 20 mins long. Oh well, I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep. Now, I was amazed by one thing when I arrived in London. Nope, not by the double-decked red buses (though, they are cute. But I got used to them back when I spent a summer in London in 2005), nor by the cute accent of everyone around me or the gorgeous weather. No, it was the free wireless connection in the Greenline Bus that took me from Victoria Station to Slough. I was able to surf on the internet for about an hour, from a bus. I’m such a geek, hehe.

Anyway, after getting off the bus, I found my way to X’s place, who is the other French Language Assistant who kindly offered me to stay with her the time for me to find my own place in Slough. She lives in Langley, an area of Slough that looks quite cute, with lots of trees and lawns and small houses. X is really nice and helpful :-)

This article is already way too long so I’ll stop here and talk about accommodation and everything in the next one! That’s it for my first day in the UK!