How I'm Finding Summer School

After my hectic life of the past year on three continents, balancing 15 credit hours per semester, and moving...err...three times, summer school in Paris is quite a change. There's truly only one thing I hate and that's my cronic inability to store data. I can remember my favorite brand of cheese, the 16 merto stops from Massy to central Paris, and side streets to Paris sites. All this is brilliant (or not) but I can't remember linguistic rules which would serve me well, if I could remember them that is. Exactly.

My summer language intensive program includes 53 students, 53 names, 53 stories from 8 countries, brilliant. I screwed up the placement test (too much Bollywood since my French days) so after a few adventures my retained French warrented a replacement the next class up. My class contains 14 students, some speaking brilliant French, and I sit between two American.

For coffee break, I drink tea. I speak French at mealtimes with students from United Kingdom (Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England, I know there's a difference). I do homework in the evenings while other students laugh hysterically over YouTube videos and get high on French chocolate. I spend afternoons insuring my sister does her homework. I spend the hours between 1 and 6:50am trying to sleep. I sacrifice things I love for the sake fluency in French. What's more, I explain my life spanning several continent over and over again. Brilliant.

I thought coming back to Massy would be challenging as I'd confront memories of my time here in 2006-2007. It's not always easy but there's another valuable lesson about life overseas; we're not slaves to a place. It's what we make it, and by extension, it's what we decide to remake it. There's thing living overseas teaches you, and other lesson in overseas life.

Brillant. Bon, je vais partir et parler en français...a la prochaine...