T-3 weeks

Another obligatory post for my CIEE blogger internship, ruminating about nothing in particular except the passage of time and whether or not this year was worth it:

8 and a half months down. 3 weeks to go before I see my parents and my brother. 4 weeks left in France. 6 weeks before I come home and see my friends and my cat and everything else.

I'm starting to be really glad that I didn't come for only a semester. In October, November, and December I wanted to go home. I didn't, because going home would be giving up, because it would've been complicated to come back to Homestead in the middle of the year, and because I didn't want to make a big deal (to my host family and to my organization) out of a situation that wasn't horrible, but was simply less good than my life at home would've been. Here is something I wrote for an October 26, 2012 blog post “Angst”:

“Because I've settled in now, which is a good thing, I can evaluate my new life and how happy I am in it. And it's just a little depressing because while I appreciate the idea of having an adventure, I just like the Silicon Valley better than the Vendée in most respects (not all, but most). And I came here looking for an adventure -- it is an adventure to live abroad, but it doesn't feel like one. My life is actually pretty boring. It's not terrible by any means, and it's not like I'll be suffering until I come home next summer. But it is depressing because that means I'm sort of waiting to come home, instead of reveling in every moment.”

I just plain felt like I'd be better off at home. And with all the expectations I had before coming here that my year in France would be amazing and adventurous and fulfilling, I felt let-down. My friend Julia thought I should follow through on this feeling. If you'd be better off at home, go home, she said. There's no reason you should stay if you aren't happy.

But I didn't. September, my first month, had been hard and really long, but I had an expectation that things would get better as I got settled in. I broke down once at the end of September, set off by feeling overwhelmed by my French homework but really just homesick and lonely. October was bad because I started to realize that maybe I wouldn't settle in after all, or at least I would be worse off than at home. November was horrible, except for my trip to Paris. In December things started to look up. On the 28^th of November (“Ultimate”) I wrote:

'Maybe it's too soon to say so, but I feel like this weekend was a turning point. I have a purpose now. Just as marching band was my heart and soul at home, so too can Ultimate be my passion here. These past few months have been aimless and boring, but now I finally have something to get me out of the house, something to work for, and something that's really my own... I don't know if this'll turn out to be an unrealistic expectation, but I can picture in seven months looking back and saying, “Yeah, that first Ultimate tournament at La Rochelle – that was when I really started to have fun here. That was when I first found a reason to stay in France.”'

At least I was right about that. It was my Ultimate team that pulled me out of my funk. For awhile I stayed only for that. School was boring, I didn't have real close friends like back home, and I didn't enjoy going out with my host siblings to their friends' parties. But I had Ultimate twice a week, tournaments on weekends, and it was something different from what I had at home. This is important – having things that are too similar means you're too likely to compare them. High school in France is quite different, but it's still just high school, and it's easy enough to say that it is worse than Homestead. Many other elements are the same – I am more compatible with my high school friends at home than with the people I've met here.

Obligatory picture to break up the text: this is a frisbee team (not mine, actually) that I ended up playing with at last weekend's tournament because I am too old to play in the under-17 category with my usual team.

 

So it's the things that I don't have at home that I'm going to miss. I'll miss my host sister. I've never had a sister or lived with another girl my age before, and my relationship with her is special and way different than what I have with my brother. I don't have anyone like her in the US and I'll miss her a lot. I'll miss my Ultimate team, because I was much closer with them than I was with my pickup team at home, and we went to tournaments together, went camping together, and bonded as a team. I'll miss my frisbee coach. He's my neighbor and drives me to every frisbee practice, so we've spent a lot of time talking in the car. We discuss politics, people, cultures, frisbee, life, and everything else that comes to mind. We are quite different but have a lot of mutual understanding between us; we understand each other and I just plain really like talking with him, and yet I would hesitate to call him a friend because of our large age difference and how much I respect him. I have come to realize that I will miss him a lot because he is something to me that I didn't have at home either: a mentor. An adult who isn't a parent who gives me advice, whom I respect enormously and like so much that it hurts inside. I don't think I'll miss France, because there's not much to miss about a country. I'll miss baguettes and Kinder and maybe certain traditions like saying hi to people on the street instead of just walking past them, or the way French people are blunt and honest, less subtle and confusing than Americans. But that isn't much; I don't think I'll go into withdrawal over baguettes. I'll really miss the people I've met though, because they are the reason I've laughed and learned and grown here. Humans are social animals; life would be nothing without other people. Essentially what I've done here is I've left one life to build another, so now I have two families, two high school groups of friends, etc. And since my life here is pretty complete, it's going to be weird to leave it.

So in December things were looking up, because I had frisbee and was becoming more and more close with my host family. On February 2^nd, I wrote:

“The halfway point was January 22^nd. I feel like I should have passed the halfway point a long time ago, like I should be almost done. It might well end up feeling like that – I rather hope these next four months and one week pass much more quickly than the first half did. After all, I have never lived a longer week than the first week I was here, and never a longer month than the first month. It took until November for time to speed back up to its normal steady tumble.”

And I wrote about how, in a way, I wished I could go home because I'd already fulfilled the reasons I came to France: speaking the language and learning about the culture. But going home would feel incomplete. And truth be told, time really did pass exactly like I said it would. September was the longest month of my life with October just behind, and recently the months have been passing without me even noticing that they went by. (Admittedly, May has been going slower than April because I've been thinking a lot about seeing my parents in 3 weeks.)

In February a lot of other things changed as well. I went to England with my class and I turned 18. The combination of these two things seemed to work some change on how I view myself in a group situation. I feel more confident, more like I belong, more like I have the right to be there, to do what I want, say what I want, be who I want and if anyone questions me, they'll be the weird one, not me. The trip was certainly a bonding experience, but it was also the realization that I'm an adult that helped.

March was a good month as well. I wrote some advice for future exchange students, and went to Méribel a second time. And started being really inseparably close with my host sister. In April I decided where I'm going to college, I started forgetting to be embarrassed about my accent, and the sun started to come out after a long, rainy winter. (Unfortunately, in May it's raining again.)

So in the end, was it worth it? If I had been at home, I wouldn't have been perfectly happy either. I would've still been itchy with wanderlust if I hadn't taken the opportunity to travel. I would've been reasonably content with school, classes, and friends, though occasionally lonely and grumpy because that is life. Here school was undoubtedly worse, although I gained cultural perspective and language skills. I changed a lot, and feel like coming home might be weird because I'm a different person than I was when I left. Change is not intrinsically good, but it's hard to regret the person you are now, because even if you've lived through bad experiences that you wish didn't happen, you are a stronger/more cautious/more confident/more experienced person for it. There are people I never would have met if I hadn't come who I'm very glad I've met, although there are also people I've missed a lot by being here. I do feel like I'm more ready for college now, because now I know that the Silicon Valley gives one a skewed view of what is normal, and I've seen a lot more of how different people and cultures function.

In the end, regret is impossible, and it's hard to say if I would have been better off at home or in France. I've had some hard moments and some amazing experiences as well. It's the choice between safety and risk that you're taking, if you're trying to decide whether to go abroad. It will certainly change you. You will certainly enjoy some moments. You will certainly break down at least once. But it's an experience to have.