Yes and No

Am I ready to go home? See the title. On one hand, I've been kind of ready most of the semester. I've always known, but know more so now just how special Iowa is to me. The people, the things, the atmosphere. I've missed my family, my friends, my pets, my school, the food, and even the weather. I'm ready to be around familiar things and people.

But at the same time. There are people here...my host family, Alison, Derek, and many many many others that I, as of right now, can't imagine not seeing on a daily basis. My host mom was just gone for three days at a funeral and I definitely missed her. And nine days from now, I say goodbye for good. And yes, of course we say we'll write and email, but for how long?

The reason I haven't blogged in so long, and I apologize for that, is that I am afraid if I start thinking about all of this too hard I'm going to fall to pieces! I have nine days left with these amazing people, and I've got finals on four of them. Friday is our grammar final, then that night we are going to our fancy birthday dinner for Alison, Caitlin and I. Saturday at least Alison, Caitlin, Christine and I are going to Atlantis, a giant shopping center outside of Nantes with a Jules Verne themed carousel. Sunday and Monday I'm studying, then Tuesday is my birthday and the rest of my finals! I've got both my Palestine and my Atlantic World (read HARDEST) finals, then Wednesday is European Union and practical Phonetics. Thursday I have both my phonetics lab and conversation finals, and then I'm done. Friday morning 8:00 I'm on the train to Paris, then the airplane back to the states.

Today we had a "going back" session with Madame Rouchet, basically her telling us its not going to be as easy as we think. She tried to reinforce that we HAVE changed while we've been here, a lot, even if we don't feel like it. When I'm not busy studying for finals, I will dive into this topic for all of you lovely people to read.

Since my visit to Normandy, life has been both eventful and monotonous. I turned in papers in three different classes (two of them I got back yesterday and I ROCKED THEM!!!) and I also had a midterm (which I definitely did NOT rock).

Last Tuesday I got hit really hard by the cold that's been going around and spent the day in bed with a pillow over my head. Friday we had a guided tour of the Musee Dobree, the city's museum. It was very, very interesting, our guide was wonderful and talked a lot about the 18th century. We were in a room with examples of jewelry when all of the sudden Aisha fell, literally right in front of me. Her pulse and pupils seemed okay, we took her insanely heavy backpack off of her and walked/carried her to a chair. The rest of the group moved on, but I ended up staying with her so she wasn't by herself. The most impressive thing about it is that she didn't stop speaking French, at all. I couldn't form a coherent sentence I was so shaken, and she was talking to the doctor in fluid French. I found out this morning that she was told by a doctor she went ot this weekend that she has a blood condition, if she gets too warm (it was hot in the museum and she was still wearing her coat) that her blood pressure drops, and well we saw the result.

Friday night I completely lost my voice, but went to the football (soccer) match with Derek and Alison and it was AMAZING. Go figure, I actually like soccer. The match was a ton of fun, even though I nobody could understand anything I said. Saturday I had planned to do a solo visit of the chateau and then to finish up my Christmas shopping. What I didn't realize is that Saturday morning came with pounding rain and winds of up to 115 km/hour. It was insane. I went to the castle, soaking wet, couldn't speak at all still, and about halfway through started feeling really just awful. I kind of skimmed through the rest of the museum and then just went home.

The rest of the weekend and most of this week has been getting ready for finals. Last night was the play that both Alison and Derek are in , so we went across town last night after conversation club to watch them. They did such a good job, especially with a director of whom I heard many a horror story. Caitlin and I left together, and since we couldn't exactly find my bus stop, we walked to the tram. It was after 11, so the night bus was running, so I figured I'd just take the tram to the Chateau then walk to the Cathedral and wait for the bus, or walk home. We stopped at the first tram stop to look at the map when a young man approached us. He asked us if we spoke English and if we were American. I ignored him, but Caitlin answered. He took of running, calling for friends, so we linked arms and started walking at a decent clip down the tram line to the next stop. Before we knew what was happening, he'd run back up and slapped Caitlin on the backside. I was at the point of getting ready to turn around and try to deal with things when another four guys came walking up from the other side. At first I was scared, thinking we were about to get in over our heads, but then I recognized two of them from my conversation club group earlier that night. They asked us if we wanted them to walk us to the next stop, and I about cried I was so glad they were there. We ended up walking and joking for three or four stops, then stopped to wait. I again looked at the map with Caitlin to figure out the best plan of attack, and realized that the next night bus wasn't for another 45 minutes or so. Two of the guys offered to both walk and drive me to my house. Caitlin as well, but she lives right off of the tram so declined. I thought really really long and hard about the best solution, and ended up letting the one drive me, as long as we gave a ride to the other. This turned out very well, they were really nice. They're both students at the computer science university in Nantes, and tomorrow I am going to ask Julie for their names so I can send them a card or something, as they dropped me off on my front step. Don't worry, today was MUCH less eventful. Had my last EU class, my second to last grammar and Atlantic world classes, came home took a nap, and am now studying grammar, and waiting for my mom to call for dinner. Derek is coming over after dinnerish to study, so hopefully he'll be able to help me understand the difference between a hypothese and conditional, and which tenses turn into which other tenses when a hypothese is used. Whew!

Incidentally. My favorite French word? vraisemblablement. It means probably or presumably, which isn't very exciting, but it sure is fun to say!