Wow. So I’m pretty sure that it has been a month or so since
I have written. I hope that this is the kick-start I need to continue on a
weekly pattern again. Anyway, this is what I started writing weeks ago, and I
will just update it to current times!
I feel silly that I haven’t written in two weeks! It
seriously feels that only one week went by and that I didn’t just miss my
duties of a weekly writing. Last Monday I spent the night writing my first two
assignments for my art history classes (so I was writing a bunch, but just not
in English…) Boy, there is a lot to catch up on! I just don’t know where to
start. The last two weeks have felt like a giant blur- in a nutshell it has
been filled with planning out trips (spent four hours in my favorite tea salon
trying to plan out train and plane tickets, then going to the actual train
station to exchange old tickets and buy new ones- I wish that I had a travel
agent genie that would just appear when needed!) doing homework (yes, mom I
actually do go to class and do homework!), and just running around getting
things done. I finally ordered my new phone- the sim card arrived and my actual
new phone is theoretically coming tomorrow! I’m so excited! With my new plan I
can call the states anytime and I don’t have to continuously be buying credit
ALL THE TIME. I’m excited to be able to call my parents more frequently and not
have to feel weird about using my homestay family’s phone.
I think that most students who are abroad (I know my friends
here do it all the time) use Skype to call their families back home- but I
don’t quite have that luxury because it is not supported by our satellite
internet that is our only option at home. So therefore I am, once again, either
behind in the technology or unable to use the technology that is present for
use today (example: did not get texting until college, didn’t get picture texts
‘til a few months ago…). It just amazes
me though that we have all this technology at our disposal. The other day I was
thinking about how I now have my new phone that allows me to call anywhere in
the world, yet when my mom studied abroad she could only call home one every
month or so from a payphone. And it had to be quick phone call. I can’t even
imagine how we will communicate with our children when they go abroad for
college!
Okay… Now to present times!
Where to start? First of all, my new phone is all set up and
I loooove being able to call home/cell phones anytime and anywhere. It’s just
great and makes me feel a little bit more connected to my family. I have truthfully had a bit of a struggle
being away from home for so long- it has now been 11 weeks. I’m proud of myself
for going abroad, but I am such a homebody and a family person that it has been
hard to have so much distance between me and my loved ones (including my
amigos!!!). I was so happy to see Syd over my Toussaint break! (she even got to
use my new phone to call home! Yay!)
I just got back from my Toussaint trip. I spent five days in
Paris then took the chunnel to spend three days in London and then I spent two
days (shortened from four…) in the countryside of Luxembourg. I love, love,
love Paris. Charley, (who was my travel partner during this trip!) said the
other day that when I used to say that I love Paris he thought it was because
of all the cliché aspects, but that after seeing me interact with the city, he
understood that I loved Paris as a city- not just the glorified idea of Paris.
I loved spending time running around the streets of Paris, visiting my old
neighborhood Le Marais, going to
museums and exploring places that I hadn’t been before! (Charley stayed with
his friend Julian, who took us for lunch one day to a little village inside of
Paris- it was great!) and of course, I GOT TO SEE SYD! I went to church on
Sunday with Sydney and spent the afternoon and evening with her walking around
beautiful Paris in the nighttime.
I had such a great time in Paris and I got to visit with my
de Limur family, see Syd and stay in Karin’s apartment. I was so sad to have to
say goodbye and hop on the train to London. But I loved London so much more
than I expected I would, that now I am a bit torn between Paris and London. But
I still love Paris a bit more I think… they just speak English in London…. I
had a lovely, lovely time in London though, I stayed with Flynn and Diana (LOVE
THEM!) and visited a bunch with my friend Emma from UCLA. It was a great trip
and again when I came time to leave, I was so sad! It was lovely getting to
know London as a city beyond the tourist sights (though we did spend time
visiting them!) I just felt like there was so much more we could have seen and
done and that three days was very, very short. I am planning to come back to
London though soon! Luxembourg was next… it was interesting to say the least.
We arrived at the airport in the late afternoon to discover that the buses that
would take us to the village where our hostel was weren’t running that day due
to a holiday…. We had a bit of a panic as we were told that to take a taxi out
to the village it would cost more than 70 euros! We decided to take a shuttle
into the actual city of Luxembourg and after much debate (we were thinking of
just getting a hotel in the city, which would have been around the same price
as our hostel and the taxi ride) we decided to take a train into the closest
city to Hollenfels. Once we were in Merch we took a short taxis ride into the
400-person village. He told us some history about Luxembourg, which is always a
treat! The hostel was cute, but a bit isolated and the village, well, was tiny
with only one restaurant…. We laughed each time we went because there was
obviously a communication issue with the waitress each night (we tried to speak
French, but she we think spoke German or “Luxembourgish”….) but we laughed so
hard when on our last night we overheard her saying to some English folk “Oh I
speak English….” WHAT? We have had quite a few of those situations… haha.
Luxembourg was chilly and rainy and we hiked the first day we were there. Even
though it was beyond freezing in Paris and London, Luxembourg seems colder and
damper to me. The hiking made me homesick because I felt like I was back home
and would eventually stumble upon my house and have hot chocolate by the fire
with my family.
The whole trip was amazing- I just love Paris and London-
but it all made me a bit homesick to not have my family there with me. It was
the first time I have had to plan and implement an entire trip by myself (of
course I had Charley, but it wasn’t like having a parent there to help when
need-be and seeing family friends made me homesick too because I would remember
all the times we would all spend together).
Well, I am back in Lyon and though I like the city, I don’t
feel that innate feeling of being at home here… maybe it will come? I don’t know.
At this moment I am feeling like going home to California and part of me wishes
I was just a semester student here, but I am so grateful for being here and the
amount of amazing adventures that are on the horizon (I’m going to Madrid this
weekend to see Anjali and our “Moroccan cousin” Abdel!) and I know that I will
learn so much about myself by staying here the full academic year, I just have
to overcome these feelings of separation. Don’t get me wrong, I love being
here, there are just little ruts that I have to maneuver around…Originally, I
thought I would stay for 12 months, but I might go home at the beginning of the
summer, haven’t decided yet and I have plenty of time to figure it out!
Oh boy, this is a long post! And it only scratched the
surface!
Chloe and Syd, I miss you two a lot and I can’t wait ‘til we
are all back together again!
xoxox
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