Leaving so soon

Salut from France perhaps for the last time!
     Its been a lovely 5 months here in France and its very difficult to believe that it really is basically June and I am headed home in two days. Mentally I think I am still in March! The weather here is staying nice and we are all enjoying our last few days in the sun and our last few amazing coffees before we all ship out for our various home countries. These last few weeks have been a headache of paperwork and banking but with my last cash out at the bank today I think I am finally out of the woods. I borrowed an extremely old vacuum and washed down my entire closet of a room to be left only with a pile of old shirts and some recyclables. My bags are about all packed and of course massive and the amount of clothing I will have to wear onto the plane may suffocate me before I even arrive in the USA but hopefully they will drop down one of the oxygen masks and I'll pull through. Not looking forward to my 8 hour and 40 minute flight as it lands me in Philly and I am assured to get flagged for some stupid reason and dragged through US Customs with my luck. However chin up I will be happy to oblige the hard working (meaning work more than 30 hours a week) english speaking customs workers. Heck they will be friendly faces compared to some of the people I've dealt with here. There will be many things I miss here, for instance a public transportation system that goes where you want it to as opposed to the one in Burlington which uses the strangest routes imaginable. And the Beignets which put any jelly donut in the states to shame. And coffee coffee coffee, no idea how I will get my fix from the drip nonsense we have in the states. The theater was lovely, the restaurants offering lots of specialities and my classes filled with international students from places I hope to someday visit. Most everyone lived up to their stereotypes, the American Skateboarder, the loud drunk and louder spanish speakers, the organized always putting everyone to shame academically asians, the germans with their constant talk of communist political parties, Lithuanians and their basketball (was not aware of that one but apparently its huge there!) and the french with their striped shirts, Bread, snotty attitudes and closing everything constantly for whatever random holiday or sunny day they liked.
 
      Seriously though this trip has made me appreciate a lot of things I take for granted at home, peanut butter cups and decent cheeseburgers! Seriously though an American education geared towards building character and the ability to debate ones classmates is seriously lacking in the french system and I think they are missing some crucial we locked on to long ago. I will be excited to have an actual conversation with a professor when I get home and to write a paper that hits on a topic applicable to the course. Honestly the french seem to do a lot of blabbing and busy work and a lot less educating and leaning than I am used to. But its beautiful here and I think they take a lot more time to appreciate that then we do at home and so I will try to bring that philosophy back with me. It is a humbling experience for sure to live in a foreign country and not really understand very much and to constantly seem like a fish out of water.    

   But it is an important experience and one that comes with many surprises like the few amazing french people who graciously helped find class notes and met for coffee and spoke frankly about french politics. Surprises of gorgeous churches and architecture around every corner and parks filled with people and animals as soon as it got warm enough to stay outside for any meaningful amount of time. I will miss the jam, and the food without massive amounts of artificial ingredients and enough preservatives to pickle my insides. I will miss the market with all its lovely shouting and colors and families and food. My cheese guy will be eternally behind the counter of his lovely wares and the creepy rabbits with their eyeballs still in will haunt my nightmares for years to come. And when I want to believe in incredible feats of humanity I will only have to glance at my photos of Mont St. Michel to know that somethings must be seen to be believed.

      What I am gaining though is no small thing, UVM beckons along with my senior thesis and an apartment shared with two of the greatest friends I've got. Dad's chicken parm will certainly soften the blow of no more french cuisine and as long as I can run out and grab a reeses cup whenever I want I will be happy. Target will feel like heaven a store where I can buy cough syrup and a dvd and plates and cereal all in the same place! Good old bessie and I will be cruising over there very soon I am sure. I will struggle to be as eco friendly as I was here, being green is built into many things the french do every day but honestly if the health of the environment hangs on whether or not the shower shuts off automatically every 60 seconds I'll live through the death of every tree in the world before I give up my regular shower again. (Not really but I do hope it doesn't come to that). France its been lovely, Rennes its been a blast, Spanish people stop waking me up at night and University its been interesting. USA I will see you sooner than seems possible. I will be sure to post one last time filling you in on what I am sure will be a variety of travel antics.
All my love from France !