90. 4 months to go...

so i'm officially more than 5 months into the afs experience & i'm starting to be in the same mentality that i had before i left for france: doing countdowns & thinking about the "last time i do something"

what i've realized a lot in the last week is how MUCH i've adapted to my new life, how much i've completely integrated to the point that i can't even differenciate what's routine from what's "new", for lack of a better word. i'm at the point where i'm practically as far as someone can go into "living" & it's starting to scare me that in 4 months, i'll have to "get out". my question is...how??

firstly, i've made some incredible friends, people who treat me like a real friend; they hang out with me not because i'm a foreigner but because they actually want to (i'm pretty sure, at least...) i've had great moments with them & they include me. as for my family, it's the same. i feel like i'm part of the family except that i don't have to feel it, you know? i just live it. i'm just that far in. it's really hard to explain this properly cause honestly, i don't really understand it myself but yeah...i think this is the first time this experience has surprised me.

as for my teachers, even they are surprised voire impressed my me. not only because of my marks but because my efforts. i've honestly never had so many teachers congratulate me & just the fact that they're strict french teachers whom didn't think much of me or whom i didn't get along with or whom didn't really care, even THEY have paid me compliments. basically, what i'm trying to say is that these past two weeks have been scarily good. not necessarily great but just good & who can ask for more? maybe the weather has an effect on me but i swear it's all true. christmas break was turning point number one & this is turning point number two.

please know that i'm writing this as i feel & i'm trying to be as true as possible to myself, without considering the feelings of anyone else. they thing is, before i left, i kept asking myself, "how can i leave all of these people?" & now i find myself asking the exact same question. how can i possibly? there are truly some wonderful people here, people that i don't want to have to forget just because of "long-distance". the problem is that i know that i won't be easy to stay in contact with my host family & friends & it's possible that we all get lazy so what if???

i'll miss the food too. the baguettes, the cheeses, the ACTUAL lunches as opposed to disguting cold-cut sandwiches that i loath so much.

what surprises me most is how long i haven't seen my own family. i can't BELIEVE i haven't seen my sister, brother, mom, grandparents for SIX MONTHS. how insane is that?! but réciproquement, i also can't believe that i've lived with my host family for six months.

so i feel like i'm turning in circles trying to explain this, which is true; from one perspective, six months is not big deal, living abroad is not big deal. a lot of people travel & live away or in a different country for long periods; a lot of people even immigrate. but then again, from my personal perspective, this is a HUGE thing in my life that i'll never forget. when i think back on my life, it would be something like:
childhood-FRANCE-adulthood

OMG!! perhaps it's my transition between childhood & adulthood!! even more significance added. oh myohmyohmy... i'll try to make the next post more interesting...

this weekend, it's the fête des grand-mères so we'll be lunching with the grandparents although fête des grand-pères doesn't exist...curious...

bisous

[bt]