A Pandemic Year Abroad
Rachel Elphick
“Une année à l’étranger” is, in my opinion, a staple of the MFL degree. I hadn’t realised until I got out to Belgium this year how absolutely essential it is for students to be dunked headfirst into a scenario that forces them to converse with others in their studied language. Of all of the moments in the 21st century to attempt going on a year abroad, however, this one may not have been the wisest.
I am currently six months into my eight-month British Council Assistantship, Belgium is bracing for the third wave of the pandemic and I have an awful feeling that these last two weeks of holiday and six weeks of work are going to dissolve into a panicked scramble.