The final stretch...

It's hard to believe there's only five weeks to go. I would say it's also hard to believe how rarely I've been posting on my blog, but maybe I should have seen it coming...I think when you're in a foreign country, every moment feels so loaded with learning potential: a trip to the pharmacy, grocery shopping, a quick phone call, it's all a possibility to live in (and improve on) the language I came here to speak. As a result, everyday activities are loaded with significance -- and it can be hard to justify quiet time...or blogging time, for that matter.

But that's okay! I'll try my best in the next few weeks to write a bit more...but my top priority, as the days go by, is to just livelivelive here, in the moment. I feel so happy, so at peace with my routine here. And I'm so happy with the fact I've adapted to this strange and lovely life. It will be hard to leave, and it will be hard to jump into the job search once I get back...but I'm trying to think of that uncertainty as liberating, rather than overwhelming. Looking back on almost any moment of uncertainty in my life, I always wish that at the time I'd also felt the exciting sense of possibility that I project retrospectively. Granted, it's hard to feel that way while you're in the midst of it, as I soon will be...but for the sake of Future Marina Looking Back, I'm just trying to keep the uncertainty positive.

I have no CLUE what I'll be doing or even what I'll be looking for when I'm back stateside, but at least I'm doing lots of writing and am taking in "grist for the mill." France and its bureaucracy rarely disappoints on this front. There's something so fantastically off-kilter about how things work here. I'd almost describe it as a clock with hands that spin in opposite directions. And everyone knows that it's wacky, but they still tell the time by it anyway.

Bedtime for now!

Kids say the darndest things...

After a two-week vacation in New York, the idea of coming back to France seemed so strange. New York is supposed to be my real life, this (Le Havre, France) is supposed to be my time-out, post-college adventure life -- in other words, it's supposed to delay my foray into the real world. But after three months in France, habit began to set in, and I began to feel comfortable, habituated...suddenly, instead of feeling like I was taking time off for an adventure, I felt like a real, working person...which, in fact, I am in Le Havre. And that was just as exciting as (or even more exciting than) seeing France a fleeting adventure.

But in coming back from New York just a few days ago, it was hard not to feel like I was leaving "real life." I have almost no doubts that I want to live in the U.S. -- I mean, plans change, but I've come to France for the year with the full intention of moving right back to the U.S. after -- which is maybe why I wanted to come to France at all. And as much as I had begun to feel that Le Havre was a home for me, going back to New York felt like going back to my home -- and nothing can really compete with that.

There's something a little crazy in the idea of leaving so many people I love back at my real home...but in the end, coming back to my routine here has been pretty surprisingly quick, and comfortable, and overall quite pleasant. I wish everyone from home could be here with me -- but then, I guess, this wouldn't be what it is. I love my housemates. I love my students (or most of them, at any rate). The first Friday I got back yielded probably my favorite interaction with a student yet.

I was asking them what they had done over vacation when one student, V., who's always got a mischievous smiler and a gleam in his eye, raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"This vacation, I went to New York."

New York? New York! "Wow, V., me too!"

His classmates were also amazed.

"Yes," V. continued. "I went to New York, and I also went skiing in Vermont."

Whoa. Whoa. "V., that's amazing, me too!"

"And it was the first time I had gone skiing for 11 years."

At this point, I was wild-eyed with amazement, looking around the classroom for equal incredulity. "V., that is SO crazy, that was exactly the same with me -- we had the same vacation!"

"Yes...but when I got to New York, I got sick."

Wait a minute. At this point, I began to think that maybe that mischievous smile was just ever so slightly more mischievous than usual. "And also," he added, "it snowed more in Vermont than in New York, which is really unusual."

And suddenly I realized. He has a twin sister in a class I see earlier in the week and, apparently, she had written down EVERYTHING I had said about my vacation and passed it on to him. Clever!

The rest of the class started to laugh as an all-but-visible lightbulb went off above my head, and I kept playing along.

"Oh, V., so you went to New York to see your family?"

"Yes, to see my family."

"And your friends?"

"Yes, also to see my friends."

"And your boyfriend?"

"Yes, also to see my boyfr--no! No! Wait!"

There was something so delightfully wacky about the whole thing. What a silly prank to pull on a teacher! And how clever! But, best of all (and at the risk of sounding a bit like Sally Field)...it made me feel as though they "really like me." It was so playful of them, so cute, so nice -- nothing mean about it. Just pure, sneaky, mischievious fun -- and not the kind of thing you'd pull on a teacher you disliked. It felt great.

So there it is -- a long overdue post, at last! Another to come soon, I hope.