Monday, May 27, 2013

It's almost time to say goodbye.

This will probably be my penultimate post; I'm heading back to the States on Thursday. I plan to write a debrief sort of post sometime after I get back to the States and re-acclimated to the culture. I've had an eventful last week or so, what with finals and my parents coming to visit for a few days. Eventful, but honestly not all that interesting, other than my Dad cracking me up with some of his attempts to speak French. There are some pictures over on Facebook, if you're interested. They were only here for about 3 days, so we mostly just did the rounds on all the museums. They had a museum pass, and my student I.D. gets me into most Paris museums for free, so we had a really nice time observing a lot of art and history. But that's not really what I want to talk about in this post. A couple of days ago, a friend from the States asked me a question that really fits in well with what I'm feeling this week.



What am I looking forward to the most when I get back to the States, and what will I miss the most about France? Those are both sort of long lists, but I'll try to answer them the best that I can. I looking forward to spending some time with my family. I'm dying to spend some time with my sisters and my nieces and my parents and all my extended family. When you can't visit and don't have a phone with which you can easily call your family whenever you like and just talk, you miss a lot of things. I'm a little disappointed that I probably will not see much of my sister Beth; she just got an awesome new job out in California and I'm insanely happy for her, but still sorta sad I probably won't see her until Christmas. Another thing I'm really looking forward to is good ethnic food. The French don't do international cuisine very well. I'm particularly looking forward to Latin and Asian food, because I love it, but also because it is so terrible here. I'm also really looking forward to living in a small town again. This experience has definitely taught me one thing: I am not a city girl. I can handle living just outside a huge city, but living in the middle of one like I have this year is just not for me. The last thing I'm really looking forward to is not having to speak French all the time, but I'll discuss that in a moment.

What will I miss? A lot of things. I'm going to miss my students, the high school-aged ones I teach at school and the elementary-aged kids I teach one-on-one. They're all such good kids, and I probably will never see them again. It's really quite sad. I'm going to miss being able to get a relatively good bottle of Beaujolais for about 4-5€. Somehow I think wine tastes better when you're in France and you didn't pay a huge amount of money for it. I'm going to miss my dear friend Lindsey. Over the last few months, she has become one of my very best friends, and I'm going to miss her terribly.  We're always doing fun things together, geeking out together and just hanging out in Saint-Gratien on the weekends, singing Disney songs together (sometimes loudly and obnoxiously), and listening to her funny teacher stories. And most of all, I think I will miss speaking French.

What's that, I say? Didn't I just say that I was looking forward to not having to speak French all the time? Isn't that contradictory? Well, yes. But it's still true. Think about it for a moment. Imagine that you are me. You speak French well enough to understand everything that's going on and you can express yourself moderately well. You speak a little more slowly than most French people do, and sometimes you have to think about how exactly to say something in French, but you don't have to think about your grammar all the time. You still mostly think in English. Now I want you to imagine living every moment of every day like that for more than 9 months. When you go to the grocery store, you ask for things in French. When you eat dinner (and sometimes lunch) with your family, you speak French. If you get sick and have to go to the doctor, you speak French. All of your classes and schoolwork are in French. It can be exhausting, having to think every moment of every day "I need... But wait, do I know how to say that in French?" That's the part that I'm going to be relieved to be finished with. But here's the thing. I love speaking French. It's beautiful, and fun, and sometimes just makes my heart sing. Yeah, I know that's corny, but it's true. I love that I get to speak French every day here, and almost always learn something new. It's been a dream come true. And I'm going to miss that so much when I go home.

The last few weeks, I've been talking a bit about the culture shock I'm expecting to experience when I get home this weekend. I've gotten a couple of questions from friends who don't understand why I would experience culture shock when re-entering my home culture. It's quite simple, really. Culture is like a habit; well, really a series of habits you form when you enter said culture. They can be habits formed for social interaction, eating habits, sleeping habits, etc. It takes twenty-one days to form a habit; I read that somewhere, and in my experience it's true. So suppose you've developed all these new habits within the first three to four weeks of your stay, sometime in mid-September. Well it's the end of May now, and you've suddenly got to change these habits of the last nine months. It can be really disconcerting. An example closer to home: lets say you have a pretty strict bedtime routine. You eat dinner, you clean up the kitchen, read a book for a bit, then shower with soap first followed by shampoo followed by conditioner, then you put on your pajamas and go to bed. It's clearly defined, you do it in that order every night. Now let's suppose suddenly some rules dictate that you can't eat dinner before 8pm, the showers only work between 5-8pm, and you aren't allowed to use shampoo and conditioner consecutively (silly, I know, but just go with it; it's a metaphor). So now, you come home, go straight for the shower where you have to do shampoo followed by soap followed by conditioner, then have dinner, clean up, etc. It would be different, but you'd get used to it. Then, about nine months later, you have to change your habits back to the original routine. Even if you liked the original routine better, it would feel a little weird to go back to doing things that way and would take a while to get used to.

I say all this really for one reason. To warn all of you guys who are eagerly awaiting my return, expecting me to be the exact same person and jump right back into my usual life. It's not that simple. It's going to be hard for me to get used to it, and I may not be up for big social gatherings right away. This isn't to say don't invite me to do stuff when I get home this weekend; I don't know exactly how I'll react yet. But don't be hurt or insulted if you ask me to go out and I say I'm just not feeling up to it. Remember that as an introvert, when I feel stressed or uncomfortable a quieter thing with just a few people is better for me than a big social event which is many people's definition of fun. But don't be afraid to call me. I'm happy to be going home! I want to see you all!

So what does the rest of my stay in France hold? Not much. Packing up my room and just getting ready to go. I am really excited to go to Washington on my way home. I have about 24 hours to hang out in D.C., I'm staying with my cousin Carter whom I haven't seen in about 5 years, and I get to see one of my very best friends in the whole world, Kathryn. It's going to be fun, hopefully the jet-lag won't be too terrible. Well that's all I've got for the moment. I do have one last question for anybody out there reading. I've really enjoyed doing this blog this year, and might consider continuing or starting a new blog. It would probably just be about my senior year of college and all the hard work and terror that that entails, so my question is this: Would you all enjoy reading that and hearing about my less glamorous adventures in Atlanta and Decatur next year? Let me know in the comments!

2 comments:

  1. Yes, yes, yes, keep on blogging! I love reading about your life and your thoughts.

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  2. This is very belated...because I have had equal crazy and avoided the internet like a plague, but I DO hope that you keep blogging! You have a lovely voice and I love reading your thoughts!
    xo,
    Mal

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