For REALS for Reals Going to France

Woah.

Apparently my interviewer was being pessimistic when she said I wouldn't know my host family, school, or city until summer. I got all that information TODAY along with my official acceptance letter. Basically my reaction was lots of excitement, followed by disbelief (this is just a really elaborate hoax they're playing on me, right?) followed by a few minutes of nervousness followed by more excitement.

I'm going to live in a very small town (population 1750) about 45 minutes SW of Nantes, according to google maps. Close to the beach, close enough to a big city, but in a nice rural area, the land lot four times as big as ours (that's what you get for living in Silicon Valley, of course), with a swimming pool, my own room, and cats, birds, and poultry. It sounds perfect – right down to the lack of dogs, which I was concerned about since someone told me dogs are much more common in France. No snow, unfortunately – France west coast weather is remarkably like US west coast weather. Given that it's a rural-ish area, the school is 11 km away, but there's a bus.

The family: a mom, dad, 16 year old girl, and 19 year old guy. Perfect. I'm guessing it'll take me awhile to be able to speak with the teenagers, as they will most likely use slang and speak more quickly, but it'll be nice to have people my age, especially if I go to the same high school as the girl, which I think is the case. They're very active, love sports like skiing, hiking, and biking, love to travel, socialize often, and seem like very kind and interesting people. I loved the introductory letter they wrote to me – they said all the right things. I hope with all my heart that they will like me and I will like them and we will all get along splendidly.

I've already packed up my things over and over in my head. What will I bring? What will I say to them when I first meet them? How will I survive with a more difficult high school system in my second language? How will I make friends, not being able to rely on my dry wit showing through the language barrier? My French is so rusty. I need to practice – I'll make it a goal to listen to French youtube videos every day to improve my comprehension, which is the most difficult part of languages for me (even in English I have trouble understanding what people say). My head is bursting with a thousand different irrelevant questions, or rather, concerns I shouldn't bother thinking about yet. I'm a bundle of excitement and nervousness. How will I last through 59 more days of school, focus on AP tests, finals, SAT IIs, etc., when I have an adventure this massive in front of me? I have second-semester senioritis to the worst degree, and I'm a junior.

I'll leave in late August, and be gone for 10 months.

I've been planning this since this past August, so why is it only now that I'm realizing what I'm going to do, and just how crazy it is to pack my bags and go live with a family I've never met, in a language I've never spoken growing up, to live for a year in a country and culture utterly foreign to me?

This is ridiculous. I'm so excited. More on this later, that isn't just me babbling incoherently.