Ring-a-ding-ding.. It's a beautiful day.

22 August 17:29

Well, as I sit in the airport in Paris waiting to board the plane home, I have to admit that I’m kind of relieved to be heading home. The idea of home is a tricky thing, I think, for someone who has moved around as much as I have in the past five years. Really, by now, home could be anywhere for me. Home is essentially just that familiar place that you get to go back to after a journey. And it always feels nice, whether you’re gone somewhere for eight hours or eight months. And then there’s that whole other kind of home, like where you grew up. It doesn’t matter if you’re gone from there for eight years; it’s still home. But you’ll get more on that later around November and December when I head back to Canada for a couple of months.

For now, I’m happy to say I’m officially very tanned, and I can do everything at the airport or train station in French without having to resort to the “Parlez-vous anglais?” that makes every Frenchman/woman want to tear their eyes out and punch you in the face. So, that’s definitely an improvement. Maybe when H. and I go to Straßbourg in the upcoming weeks, I won’t have to just play the German-tourist-on-the-other-side-of-the-border game. That would be impressive.

Unfortunately, I have gained no philosophically moving experience from my trip other than that the French really are pigs, but they are also no different than the average North American. I take that back. They’re actually classier. And despite everything, I’m still feeling good about tackling research in French in the future. You know how I know? I hate everything French right now. At the train station in Toulon, I practically ran into the book store (well, as fast as you can run dragging a 20 kilo duffel bag), and snatched up a couple of German magazines lest I had to read my French novel on the four-and-a-half-hour journey to Paris. Luckily, I know it’s just a phase. And so I know that if I give myself time, I could be running into the airport in London or Birmingham on my way to start grad school, snatching up every French-language magazine I can get my hands on. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? I’d be laughing if the exact thing didn’t happen with German and the days I wanted to throw myself off of the Fernsehturm in Stuttgart out of sheer frustration.

Oh, the joys of suicidal feelings as the result of language learning...