I never said I wasn't a procrastinator...

Alright, one last post for anyone who's interested. I promised my mom one email in the next week to let her know I'm alive, which is more than what she got when I went to Europe in high school, but I'm not bringing my computer with me on my trip. I leave Bordeaux at 7:57 tomorrow morning (or it might be 6:57? 8:57?- I shouldn't have chosen to travel on the day that the time changes...). I will be in Paris for a day and a half, enough time to explore a little more of the city, but unfortunately not able to go see Versailles or Monet's gardens because everything is closed on Mondays. I am going to be a history nerd and go to the cathedral of St. Denis, just a little outside of Paris, to see the first gothic cathedral. And I'm going to Montmatre, the one area of Paris that I really want to see but haven't yet (famous for being the setting of 'Amelie,' as well as the Moulin Rouge, but I'm really going to see the Sacre Coeur). Then a whirlwind of Barcelona, Lisbon, Sintra, Madrid and Paris. I'm only really going to be in Madrid's airport for about 45 minutes but I'm counting it. I actually just realized that I only have about 45 minutes to change terminals and check-in for my flight from Madrid to Paris so I can't check baggage. Funny that I'll be taking a backpack on a week-long trip when I had a duffel bag for my weekend in Paris. I'll be back in Bordeaux late Monday night November 5th, just in time for classes again on the 6th but not early enough to watch 'V for Vendetta' on the 5th of November the way I should.
This week actually went by very quickly, but it's weird because normally Fall Break feels like such a relief. This time, I'm very happy for the traveling time but I still don't feel like I'm really in classes. Oh well...I also thought I had a Linguistics exam this Thursday so I crammed late Wednesday and all morning Thursday just to find out that it won't be until the week after vacation. I blame the language barrier.
I'm looking into going to Sweden for St. Lucia's day, December 13th. I found a flight on Ryanair for .01 Euro, which is ridiculous on its own, but I might have another Linguistics quiz. However, as the last story proved, I actually have no idea. Something to look into...
I found out that I have no exams after Christmas so I have a much longer break between semesters than I thought. I just might come home for Christmas afterall, though it will make it much harder to come back here.
It's funny because I have much more complicated interactions in French all the time, but simple things like buying my train ticket all in French are what make me feel good about my language skills. There's times when I'm frustrated, such as when a waiter switches to english or when I have long conversations with my host family and they kind of assume I can't actually explain myself. But it's when I do something relatively complicated and logistical like buying a train ticket from someone who doesn't know I'm not french that I feel the greatest sense of accomplishment. It's hard because everyone keeps asking if my french is better. I'm sure it is, but not in an obvious sense. I'm more comfortable with it. My comprehension is much better just from living in the language. But it's not as if I wake up and feel, ok, today I know how to say this phrase. And tomorrow, I'll wake up knowing how to conjugate a different verb. My language skills aren't concrete, but I think that at the end of this I'll be shocked to think back to the beginning.
One other note on the differences between my college life here and at Midd: at Midd, I run out of my room 5 minutes before I have class across campus and make it before the professor. Here, for example when the trams didn't run between the center of town and campus on Friday afternoon (it's a much bigger deal than what it seems), I spent two hours walking home. It's normally a 10ish minute walk and a 25 minute tram ride. Ridiculous.
And now it's time to finish packing and go to bed. I have to wake up in 6 hours. Or is it 7?...