So What Have I Been Up To?

Just before my last desertion, I blogged about taking my French language exams and finally starting work as a nurse.

Well that's exactly what happened. I took the TCF (test de connaissance du français) with lots of fear and trembling  because I was sure that I would fail as a result of my laziness and general attitude of skiving off classes. Luckily  all those hours of watching shitty French TV and reading every material I could get my hands on, helped. I passed the exams, getting a C1 (B2 is the required level) and managing to save myself a fairly expensive 230€ resit! After a lot of hassle,  I was able to register myself as a nurse...French administrative (in)efficiency is a subject for another post. 

Anyway, to celebrate  I pierced my nose and took a well-deserved holiday, managing to fit in a very tiring but incredibly fun 2 week road trip around dixieland (southern USA). 

On returning home (feels strange to call Paris that!) I started looking for jobs and after a few false starts found something at a psychiatric hospital in what was surely the hardest three months of my life. I was working in an environment where I had no experience, with protocols/equipment/medicines which were often very different from what I had used in England, and in a totally new language. Trying to communicate in French, in medical French, with psychiatric patients who used lots of slang and were often delirious was DIFFICULT! Luckily I survived the contract, and I  was able to discover a previously unknown aspect of nursing which I love. I work in a new hospital now, in acute psychiatry (even more "difficult") and I am thriving. 

In the middle of all this, we managed to find a flat and moved from one of 11m² (11!) to a much larger, prettier 54m². We each have our own rooms and my sister can now shut her door when she gets tired of me running around naked. Best thing about the flat though,  is the living room with a canapé-lit, which allows us to have people over. The stream hasn't really stopped since we moved in, in August! Although we love having people, I'm hoping things will slow down soon, because we're tired and I need to hibernate for the winter.

So anyway, at the moment I'm loving my job; although looking for something much closer to home, I've started learning Italian, and I'm back to singing in a choir (we're doing Dvorak's Stabat Mater).

In other news, I have been dating A LOT! Not sure why, but I seem to be very popular here in Paris, although that hasn't equalled finding "the one" or one of "the ones." I'll probably do a post on the craziness that has been my experience of dating in Paris...

Allora, baci e buona giornata a tutti!