I'll be back...

So, this will be my last blog entry from France. I leave Bordeaux tomorrow morning by train, spend the night in Paris, fly from Paris to Dublin and finally to Chicago on Saturday. All of the other Middlebury students have left, so it feels vaguely like the summer before freshman year when I was the last one to go to college. I've walked my favorite path around the city every night for the last 5 nights and it gets harder everytime. I had lunch with the women from the Red Cross center today, and dinner with my host family last night- it feels so weird saying goodbye to everyone. I don't think I realized until the very end how much of a life I have here. Everyone keeps telling me I have to come back, and I keep just saying, oui, I know. I would stay forever if I could.
I will miss being somewhere where everyone expects to find at least 5 bakeries in walking distance from their house. And somewhere where the afternoon snack has an official name and is religiously observed by everyone. This entry is mostly going to be my sad, rambling thoughts about france. I've finally figured out when to use the formal word for 'you' and when the informal one is ok, and now I feel so rude using 'you' for just anyone in english. I have figured out how to sound like a french teenager, using their equivalents for 'whatever' and 'like.' I know this city as well as most people here, better actually. This is the first place where I've really lived on my own (ignore the part about the host family). I feel more comfortable here than anywhere else, and I've made my own life here. I run into people on the streets that I know.
This is going to be a tricky re-adjustment. Until I move back, anyway.

It's May?

It's May. I would probably believe you if you told me it was still March, but it's actually the middle of May. Short Recap: Megan and Dad came to visit me in March. We saw everything there is to see in Paris and Bordeaux in about 5 days. Maybe not everything, but we came pretty close. We had dinner with my host family where I was simultaneously translating between French and English for three hours; my head hurt at the end but it was fun. Megan bought a beret and some 'art,' of which she left the beret here and lost the 'art' on the Metro in Paris. I managed to survive all of my classes, just barely, and now just have two papers left to write. Tricky without a computer. We've already had our 'good-bye' picnic for everyone studying in Bordeaux. That was terrifying, especially since at the time I didn't even know what day I was leaving. For the record, I'm leaving on the 24th, which means leaving Bordeaux on the 23rd. Which means I have a week and a half left of what was once 9 months. I've started making lists of everything I want to see and do here before I leave, of everything I'm going to miss, of French words I've learned, of everything I'm looking forward to doing at home. Lots of lists. A few examples...

Stuff I'm going to miss from France:

Baguettes

Pastries

Sitting in cafes for hours

Cathedrals

Mustard

Stuff I won't miss:

Strikes/Protests

Euros

Public transportation

No computer...maybe not fair to put on the France list, but still

I'm going to campus today for the last time. The campus is the ugliest thing in Bordeaux so that makes it easier to say goodbye, but it's still weird that I'll probably never be back.
I celebrated my 21st birthday in France...which is a little anti-climatic but was still fun. We went to Biarritz, a surfing/resort town near the Spanish border for the day and just sat on the beach. I think it was about 85 degrees out, and I amazingly did not get incredibly sunburned. We came back to Bordeaux and hung out at Callie's house where they surprised me with a delicious brownie cake- I'm still impressed that they were able to make it in France. The next day I had dinner with my host family which was cute, the little girls were so excited. They gave me a really cute photo album which they promised to fill with pictures before I left, but I'm not sure if that will happen. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, and I don't know if I'll be ready to leave in a week....