Waiting on the World to Change

It's so strange to think--in 6 days, I'm going to be in Paris! Today I got the itinerary for our Paris trip and it all looks so exciting :) It's wonderful, being able to recognize so many names of places and being able to envision the exteriors, the displays, the road names, the street grid, the lights, the patterns, the smells. I'm thrilled :) 

I got to talk to my sister in Costa Rica on the webcam today! She's having such a great time. This weekend they're going to the beach. She sounds like she's made a ton of amigos already, which, again, reminds me of Harlaxton and of all the fun times, late nights, new friends....I'm just really thrilled about France :)

This time last year I remember having a small meltdown about how unprepared I felt. I realize now, now that I'm feeling the exact same way, it wasn't a feeling of being ill-prepared at all--it was just the feeling of standing on the edge of what I recognize and looking into the fog of what I don't know. The scariest part is the fact that I'll be living in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by an (almost) unfamiliar language, but that's also the most exciting part. It's my impetus for being even more gregarious and outgoing than I already am (I swear, it really is possible :P) The unfamiliarity is what drives me to take every chance, go on every trip, visit every city, learn every idiom, try every side dish, jump on every opportunity that comes my way because, this time next year, I'll be back in Music City, missing France, and I want to miss it well. 

last gasp of the death-grip love of Harlaxton

This weekend I did something I've been meaning to/wanting to/needing to do since the beginning of the summer: I drove to Evansville, Indiana, to meet up with some of my friends from Harlaxton! It's amazing the family-bonding that occurs with 160-something college kids get together for three months inside a castle in the English countryside...hence, we get to missing each other, and road trips happen. It's inevitable.

It was incredible seeing all my friends from Harlaxton :) It's funny, in England, we were all drifters, tied at the same post, grazing in circles, pretty much stationary. Here, I see my friends driving, living in houses, dating people I don't recognize, eating food in restaurants and paying with real dollars. There, we were all cloistered in the same house, taking the shuttle to and from town, spending "fake" money, letting our lives revolve around ourselves and each other. It was magic. 

Case in point, our friendships were immediate and deep. Afterwards, after living in the same quarters for three months, we all had to separate. We got so homesick--or, school sick? It sure felt like home--and went into withdrawals during the next semester. I say all this because I know that this study abroad experience will be strikingly similar--I'll know no one, I'll meet everyone, I'll fall in love with every single experience, I'll come home and dream about it for years afterwards, and I'll miss it with everything I have. C'est la vie :) 

Bonjour from Middle Tennessee!

I've spent my summer preparing for France, but now I'm ready to go and I still have a few weeks until I leave! Oh, well, more time to practice my French. I've started keeping a diary in French which is pretty challenging--think about everything you journal about, all the adjectives and verb tenses, all the idiomatic expressions--then attempt to translate it. It's really helping! Plus I've got some great resources, like About.com's Laura K. Lawless, who created a fourteen-day resource guide on preparing to study abroad in France. It's mostly a geeky combination of translators, verb quizzes, cultural tidbits, listening comprehension exercises, and a "mot du jour" or "word of the day" feature, but it's helped loads! 

A few weeks ago I traveled to the French Consulate in Hotlanta to get my visa. What a dizzying process! First, you have to register with CampusFrance, a website that ensures a uniform application process. In fact, everyone in the entire globe of the USAC French study program hates CampusFrance except--you guessed it--the Consulate! Apparently it makes things loads easier on their end, while making it more complex, more difficult to navigate and more time-consuming for everyone else involved. Thanks, Consulate. Anyway, I had to fill out an application to be approved to apply--in what other program do you have to apply to apply? I was finally cleared to travel to ATL to get my visa, so I called my roommate from freshman year who was living in ATL for the summer and asked to stay with her. Luckily, she said yes, and luckily, her apartment was a whopping 10 minute drive from the Consulate! That was a huge blessing, because it could easily take hours to get from one side of Atlanta to the other. Additionally, my appointment was at 7:45 a.m., so factor traffic into that equation and it makes for a hellishly long and nervewracking morning. I got to the Consulate fifteen minutes before they even opened, sat on an uncomfortable-but-cute sofa till I could take one of the two elevators to the eleventh floor, then waited again. The man behind the counter, clearly from the Côte d'Ivoire or somewhere else exotic and hard to understand, gave me a lot of crap about my application, but I'd thought ahead: I brought a ton of documents that they don't even ask for, like my birth certificate, a résumé, a list of all the places I'd ever lived, my pet's names, and my favorite stuffed animal, just in case they needed them. They didn't, but at least I would have had them if they had :) I felt a tad bit squeamish after I finished the visa process because I had to leave my passport there at the Consulate with them, so when I finally got it back, I was duly relieved! It feels good now being a legitimate student of the Université de Pau et des Pays l'Adours, not to mention having a government-issued visa that proclaims it for the world--or at least the customs officers--to hear!

Agenda for the day: Catch up on sleep! We took Mica to the airport this morning to catch her flight to Costa Rica (or, in French...Costa Rica....) and had to be up at 3 a.m.! I had forgotten that times that early still existed :P I've also got some packing to do, and a few last-minute calls to make. Other than that, I'm rarin to go! If only I could just fly out a few weeks too early :P 

À bientôt!