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I really can't believe how fast this semester has flown by. I'm down to three pages in my planner before my flight on June 6. Scary! (I'm also almost done with my journal. I had to buy another one last week.) I took a test today in one of my Socio-Cultural Studies class, and my final is just three Saturdays from now! (Yes, a final on a Saturday. I don't get it either.) It's kind of weird, getting my final exam schedule and having all of my teachers start talking about it, but I guess it's getting me in the zone. Meaning I'm stressing out some. (a lot.) Sara says I need to find something else to worry about.

On the one hand, I feel like I've just gotten here. I remember almost falling asleep on the train, I remember getting to the foyer and being locked out, and being just awkwardly new here for like a week. But on the other hand, I feel like I've been here forever. I think about all the stuff I've done, like the excursions, and all the material I've covered in my classes, and I realize that yes, I have been here for three months already, and the time to go home is coming up, possibly a bit quicker than I'm ready for. Just thinking about studying for the history final makes me want to curl up into a ball and sleep.

My classes haven't been "hard" in the typical sense, but there's definitely an added layer of confusion and twistiness when it's all in another language. I'm not studying the French Revolution, I'm studying la Révolution française. And France doesn't have a National Assembly, it has une Assemblée nationale. And those are the easy translations. Plus, in the time period we've covered in history class, France has had a few monarchies, a few revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848), two empires, and five Republics. I'm going to have to make the biggest timeline ever... But yeah, it's like that with all my classes, the whole language thing. But it's getting a lot easier. I haven't started thinking in French yet and English is still the first thing that wants to spill out of my mouth (I say "thank you" way too much around here) but I can at least correct myself and write out complete sentences without having to erase something. It's the little things in life.

I'm leaving for Strasbourg tomorrow morning with Inga and Becca for just a few days. It's supposed to be raining the whole time; wonderful. It's my last travel of the semester, so I hope it's worth it! I was supposed to go to Cinque Terre, but all of the trains were full, so we had to cancel our reservations. I certainly thought I would have been able to travel more than I have, but it's really, really surprising how expensive it it. We also didn't get a lot of breaks, so I would have spent the money if I could have visited a city for more than a day and a half. However I have gone on some spectacular excursions to places that I wouldn't have been able to get to by train, and I've been able to stay pretty sane. I can't deal with lack of sleep due to traveling. I've saved a lot of money, too, so I won't be broke when I come back, and I'll be able to save for a car/an apartment after college/etc.

So, yeah, I have almost exactly 25 days left! That looks like such a big number to me, but it's really not. I changed my flight so that I fly into Jackson instead of Memphis, and I'll be stuffing my face with Jerry's Catfish the day I get back. I can't wait. I can't wait to bake and cook. I keep having dreams about Kitchen Aid Mixers.

Sidenote: it's amazing how much chocolate they have here. I really don't even eat that many sweets at home, so I'm going to have to kick this habit in the bud ASAP starting June 7, but Monoprix literally has an aisle dedicated to chocolate. Not one side of an aisle, but TWO sides. Chocolate. Everywhere. It's a cross between a dream come true and type 2 diabetes waiting to happen. I just bought a three pack of milk chocolate bars because I know that I'm going to want them Sunday when I get home from Strasbourg and everything is closed. It's going to be weird to like, be able to get milk and eggs on Sundays when I get back to the States.

And driving. I might need to borrow my neighbor's kid's toy jeep to practice for a few days before I trust myself with the Sebring. That, and I broke my rosary that I hung from the rearview mirror that had been blessed by the archbishop of Rome, so Jesus won't be protecting my travels anymore. I curse the hastiness in which I tried to move it from my car to mom's before my trip to VA. I've never been so nervous driving in my life. Haste makes waste.

Also my bed is going to be really, really tall. French beds are obscenely low--like, the top of the mattress hits the middle of my calves--and my bed at home is obscenely high. The top of the mattress is at my hip and I've gotten pretty used to having to hop a bit to get up into it. And I've been using this crappy roll pillow because I never got around to getting a normal one, so my firm, square pillows are going to be awkwardly large but divine.

Saw my baby boy on skype last night, and I can't wait to cuddle up with him for a week straight. I can't wait to take him to school with me too! Such an interesting mix between a guard dog and a teddy bear.

Like I said, it's the little things.

As much as I'm having conflicted feelings about leaving France, nothing is going to compare to hearing that the plane is beginning it's final descent. I may kiss the ground. And buy an American flag and wear it around my shoulders like a cape. It'll be good to be home.

Are my clothes really worth this much?

The weather was BEAUTIFUL this past Friday! There wasn't a cloud in the sky for the first time since I even got to France. It's been either really overcast, or raining, or partly sunny/partly cloudy. And cold. Oh, so cold. I wish I could explain how biting cold it is! I've taken to wearing some cheesy valentine's day socks with my flats just so I can feel my feet and therefore NOT trip and fall on my face on the way to class. And of course, I have to walk around to run errands, so there's really no avoiding the cold. I think I'm finally getting used to it though...Like, it's not something so bizarre to me that I don't know how to deal with it. I've more just started thinking "okay, it's cold outside, so I'd better put on a coat and gloves."

But yeah, so it was beautiful on Friday, so I took some time to walk around the city and go across the river to take some pictures. The city looks cleaner with a blue sky--the white buildings look much sharper against the blue than against gray. But this morning it was snowing when I went to breakfast! Not as much of course as back home and none of it stuck, but it was still pretty cool. It was all melted by the time breakfast was over though, otherwise I would have taken a picture. There is a single small yellow rose blooming in the courtyard, and the snow had settled on the leaves and the petals; it was very beautiful. But like I said--melted by the time I could have grabbed my camera.

My classes have worked out; I'm finally in the level that I think I belong in. So, first of all, I will be taking six hours a week of Langue, which is basically like any typical language class at a university: some grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing, etc. In addition, I'll be taking a class just for grammar, and a conversation class ("expression orale") which helped me SO much the past summer that I was here. Some people were complaining, "oh, but you have to give an oral report" to which I wanted to say, "of course. It's a class about speaking." As for my electives: History of France, and Socio-Cultural studies of France. In the socio-cultural class, we'll talk about the population, women and work, the banlieues, discrimination, and political institutions.

So now...my experiences at my first laundromat! It actually wasn't too bad at all, and I got clean clothes out of the bargain. The downside is that I am now out about 6 euros (about 8 dollars) for a single load of laundry that didn't even get dried all of the way. The laundromat is literally right next door to the foyer--we're talking ten paces from door to door, at maximum. So I had my Monoprix bag filled up with my detergent for wool clothing and the bare minimum of the clothes I needed to wash: my towels, pajamas, my jeans, and a few shirts that have been stretched out. Everything was in French, duh, so that just made it all the more difficult for me to understand how these contraptions worked. Plus, figuring out how to open and close the washing machine door was a mission in and of itself. Luckily, there was just a hooded dude chilling over by his washing machine, looking like he was sleeping standing up, and two German? Romanian? Hungarian? backpackers who were basically washing their entire stock of clothes in one go, and none of them paid much attention to me while I struggled silently with the machines.

I was kind of pissed to know that 1) the single load of clothes that I brought pretty much filled up the entire barrel of the machine and 2) that it cost 3.80 euros to wash them. But that sucker ran for a good 30 minutes and was washing and rinsing pretty vigorously, so I guess I'm satisfied. I was worried that I would feel like my clothes wouldn't seem clean, but they do. And they smell like detergent (aka: CLEAN). However, the dryer really is a rip off. 13 minutes of drying costs 1 euro, so I just put in two euros and decided whatever wasn't dry after 26 minutes could just be draped over my radiator afterwards. Buuut everything came out slightly damp...oh well. They weren't getting any more of my money!! While all this was going on, I was reading and studying for my History class.

Oh, and this old man with no teeth came in with no clothes and tried to ask me how much it cost to wash clothes. I say tried because he sounded like he spoke French, the way he was pronouncing things, but then he was like "parlez-vous anglais?" but then couldn't speak any English. I finally figured out what he wanted...and pointed to the MASSIVE sign on the wall with all of the prices. And then he tried to say "merci" and made the sign language sign for thank you, so maybe he was deaf? But he had a cell phone! I can already tell that all sorts of shenanigans are going to go down at this establishment over the semester.

Other than that, I've just been chilling out for the day, cleaning my room and doing some handwashing of other clothes. I had to fend for myself for lunch and dinner, and tomorrow I'll have to take care of all three meals. I think tomorrow I'll FINALLY write about food. I also found a flier for a place on our that makes cheeseburgers AND is open seven days a week!!

I love weekends! Miss y'all!