Have you ever noticed Capitals often have their guest or invader animal? I remember how funny it felt to be observed and times to times approached by squirrels in Washington and how quickly you get surrounded by pigeons when you seat on a bench in Paris. Well, I happened to unravel the riddle of London’s animal… Let me give you clues: this animal has red fur and is famous to be mischievous in the following fable:

Perch'd on a lofty oak,
Sir Raven held a lunch of cheese;
Sir ... who smelt in the breeze,

Thus to the holder spoke:
"Ha! How do you do, Sir Raven?
Well, your coat, sir, is a brave one!""

Most of you certainly solved the mystery: London’s animal is the fox!

One very cold night around eleven o’clock, I went outside in the dark and empty streets to walk my dog. He was behaving in an unusual way running and smelling as if he was chasing something, something I couldn’t see myself. Then suddenly, we fell nose-to-nose with a red fox staring at each other too surprised to react. After few seconds, our unexpected guest calmly ran away in the dark leaving us gob-smacked. It is so unusual to meet those mysterious animals and especially from such a close point of view. I remember being delighted to be able to contemplate the fox’s magnificence like never before.

It only was when I shared my experience that my host family almost laughed telling me how usual crossing foxes around London was. They indeed were right. After this first experience, I times to times had the chance to catch sight of a fox wandering in the darkness of the night, probably searching for something to eat.

My host family then told me about a terrible story where foxes weren’t only mischievous but actually dangerous when they weren’t scared enough to stay away from humans: A four-week-old baby was injured in this own room by an “urban fox” that managed to creep into his bedroom while the mother was in the house. The attack took place in London on the sixth of February 2013. Yet, it wasn’t the first time that a fox had been reported to break into houses. Indeed in 2010, another serious attack took place in London: nine-month-old twins were attacked in their cot while sleeping. The two girls survived to their serious injuries to the face and arms but the story aroused great concern… While a range of animal experts were trying to reassure people highlighting the rarity of such attacks, Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) declared: “They may appear cuddly and romantic but foxes are also a pest and a menace, particularly in our cities. This must serve as a wakeup call to London's borough leaders, who are responsible for pest control. They must come together, study the data, try to understand why this is becoming such a problem and act quickly to sort it out”. A new war has begun...

It was in the Christmas atmosphere that I finally had the confirmation this adventure; I could only imagine till then, would actually become true. The time to get prepared was short as the courses started on Monday the 14^th of January. At first, I felt confident about finding a nice place to live and a way to get there with my little philosopher, Platon (my dog). Yet, when I started searching, I understood it definitely wouldn’t be as easy as I though… After a stressful couple weeks of research, I finally found a family with two kids (respectively aged 2 and 8 years old) renting a room in their own house. I jumped on the occasion and luckily got the room. But I wasn’t expecting what I was about to discover: plains, trains, ferries, none of them were accepting dogs on board I almost laughed when an airplane company asked me on the phone “would you like me to call X (name of the company) cargo?”, with the size of my dog it could only seem ironic. There was a last solution that kept glowing in the shadow: getting there by car. The problem was that I don’t drive and my family lives all around the world and therefore couldn’t help me so I explored the option of carpooling. I found great and very well structured national websites to help me finding my carpooler. I couldn’t tell I was very comfortable about this experience but still, I remained enthusiastic. Long story short, we were seven in the car and missed the last train to get to England. We had to wait almost three hours in an empty and closed commercial center till 1:30am to catch the next train. Surprisingly even with this misfortune, the trip was enjoyable thanks to other carpoolers’ cheerfulness. Yet, it took time to arrive to London and drop off every body at their place. As a result, I arrived at my place at 4:30am. The householder left a key next door so that I could get in, but it was a strange sensation to enter an unknown, dark house without making noise in the middle of the night. In fact, I didn’t even know where I was supposed to sleep. Luckily, I wasn’t as silent as I thought I was because the householder, Tristan, came downstairs to welcome me and show me my room.

I was then very tired but I also felt relieved to finally be there. In the morning, I had to wake up early to take my marks and be able to go to the University for the Welcome meeting. Tristan nicely helped me with my first steps in London. Everything was new and it gave me a strange feeling that I rarely experienced as I was used to travel.

There I was, in the bus to get to the University. It felt nice to discover the surrounding in the daylight and I could then understand I was living in the suburbs. After a twenty-five minutes ride, I discovered the magnificent and full of history buildings of the University Of Greenwich. It almost felt as if I was in a movie but the wonderment didn’t last long as I had to find my way in this very large campus.

I eventually succeed in finding the other ERASMUS students and recognized the other ESDES’ students. Even though we didn’t know each other very well, it felt nice to see familiar faces.

We didn’t have any other lessons that day which gave us time to discover the campus and partly understand how things worked there. I was positively surprised by the cultural mix on the campus and was excited about the idea to meet those people, all coming from different horizons.

Back home, I spend time with the family I was living with, in order to get to know them better. They were very nice and friendly which could only help me to feel good. They even had the kindness to invite me several times to share their meal. Often, Tristan would offer me a glass of wine telling me with a tone of humor that the fact I was French made him want to drink wine more often! I quickly understood that living with this family would be a fabulous human and linguistic experience.

Seeing daily the university’s wonderful buildings made me curious about their history. According to my investigations, Greenwich city is an old Romans site that has been shaped by seafaring, industry Royalty and the Navy. It was only recently (2009) that Greenwich University acquired the buildings. Today, from the campus, people can admire the Maritime museum historically known to be the Royalty’s secondary residence.

I didn’t have to wait long before starting the classes. I chose to study leadership, management, social marketing and strategic brand management. The first classes fortunately weren’t too intense which helped me to get used to the British accent.

Yet, I quickly noticed that everybody knew each-others in classes and that we were the only new faces in there which would make the integration task a little less easy. I was surprised to observe that British people were very amiable in the streets but not as nice when it came to the student population, indeed, other students seemed distant.

In the first days I wasn’t ready to rush into finding outdoor activities as the weather was rather cold and as I already had a whole family to discover and do things with at home.

It didn’t last long before we had to prepare our first homework and luckily we made friends with other permanent students. They were very helpful explaining us how to search in the library, how to borrow books and how to reference our work.

I think that one of the most difficult things I had to deal with starting from the beginning was the academic logic that is the complete opposite of French one. Here, teachers are expecting before everything else solid references and would only then, consider our writing. In France, the academic system is made to improve the ability to reflect and then research and not the other way round. In fact, a teacher even told me that we were too young and inexperienced to think by ourselves… Yet, experiencing different ways of thinking is a good training for us to be adaptable and prepared for our future.

From this point, the experience was very promising J