Some News

My French teacher had an apt simile this afternoon for how AFS gives you information-- little by little like drops from a eye-dropper. Anyway, I received two little drops today:

First: it does turn out that the French consulate requires the original documents for the visa, but AFS just notified us that they're shipping them overnight to us and we'll get them tomorrow. A relief, since our appointment at the consulate is on Monday. So that's a load off my mind. All the other forms are set, the appointment and the flights are confirmed; all that's left in the process is to actually get the stamp in my passport.

Second: AFS also just gave us some more information about my host family. As well as the host mother, Catherine, I'll have a brother who's my same age named Louis. In addition, AFS sent us their telephone number and encouraged breaking the ice. So, that'll be happening within the next couple of days, and I'll post again about how it goes. I won't lie and say I'm not nervous-- this will be the first time I'll have had a sustained conversation in French with a French person-- but I'm also excited to finally start getting to know the people I'll be living with the next six months (and I bet they feel the same). 

Four weeks from tomorrow, I'll be off to New York. Wow. All this planning is finally going somewhere concrete. Exciting, yes, but just hard to believe, since it's all happening so fast...

I HAVE A PLACE!!!

Finally, a significant development!

I finally got the name of the school I'll be attending, as well as my host family's address and the name of the person who will have custody over me while I'm abroad. I'll be in a little town called Mettray, which is just a few kilometres northwest of Tours. Here's a map: 

Going from the little map of the entirety of France in the upper righthand corner, I'm in the region of Centre, in the Loire Valley of central France, specifically in the department of Indre-et-Loire, and from there just outside Tours (imagine a little tiny dot there). 

I believe the family I'm staying with is headed by a single mother, given that she was the only one to sign the custody form, but other than her name (interestingly, she has the same name as my real mother) and address, I really don't know anything else about my host family.

Still, everything seems that much more real, now that I have a place and a name to refer to. It never felt as serious before, having to answer the question of 'So, where in France are you going?' with 'Uh...I dunno.' I've been dancing around all evening and bursting out randomly with, "I'm going to METTRAY!!!" All the vague nerves and excitement I've been feeling this past month have found their outlet. I was so excited that, when I sent off an e-mail to my French teacher telling her the news, I didn't realize until after I'd pressed 'Send' that I'd written half of the last sentence with the letters off by one on the keys, making it really difficult to read (the essential stuff I typed correctly, it was just the 'have a good week, Merry Christmas, see you on Saturday' that got messed up). 

A fantastic early Christmas present, in any case. And now I don't have to worry (quite as much) about getting the visa on time. We received the information via e-mail, in scanned documents, so we need to call the consulate after Christmas to see if it's okay to use these in the application or whether we need to wait for the originals. If the latter is the case, we may or may not have to delay our appointment, depending on when they get here, but at least now we don't have to worry about whether we'll get them before I'm scheduled to leave. 

So, yes. Happy Holidays, everyone! And, as always, updates as they come.

"In between tonight and my tomorrows"

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present, you know what I mean?"

I've had Rufus Wainwright's 'Grey Gardens' stuck in my head more or less all day, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the sadness that's hidden underneath the bright rhythm. The album it's on, Poses, is a wonderful one that I haven't really given an in-depth listen to since I bought it a few months back. Maybe over this break I can get to know it a little better.

It's been an interesting day, strangely quiet for how stressfully it started. Somehow I achieved the strange miracle of leaving a full ten minutes later than yesterday for school, but arriving there at the exact same time. My car, among its other talents, seems to have the ability to defy the space-time continuum. I always knew it was special...

The last exams all went well. The one I was the most nervous about actually went the best of all of them (Spanish, and I was never all that worried to begin with), and I finished up my Latin exam about half an hour early, which was nice. English could have gone better-- the essay topic I chose was too big for five pages and I didn't prepare enough in advance-- but life goes on.

Anyway, not really any news on France. I just felt like I should write something since today was my last day at school here in NM until August '09. Actually, small news: I did attend a conference call Wednesday night with the other AFSers bound for France. We had a Q & A session with a returnee from last year, and now some of my anxieties about what my transcripts are going to look like once I get back have lifted. Interesting overall, a few more details on what to expect once I get off the plane and when I meet my host family, etc.

I'm not sure exactly what this mood is. I feel this way at the start of every break, kind of like the way a pond looks after a rock's been thrown in and the ripples have all dissipated. Quiet, but with a nervous expectancy: well, that's over...now what? Doubtless between French and the infamous thesis I'll find plenty to do, but it's always that first evening that the gap between the big events seems too large to fill.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about people: people in general but specifically the ones that I know-- everyone I miss right now and everyone I'm going to start missing very shortly, and how many more people have managed to squeeze themselves into those 'everyone's in such a short period of time. Also some things about language, how it's not perfect like math and that's why I'm good at it and how 'circle back' is its own weird little idiom distinguishable from just 'circle' (try making a sentence with the first and substituting the second-- it doesn't work); about re-learning how to knit; about the writers who win the Nobel Prize and the ones who don't; and about how everything I'm currently reading or listening to was recommended to me or given to me by someone else. And then I realized that for nearly a year, for my choices of books I've been mostly going off the suggestions of other people or its place in 'the canon of classics' (whose membership is debatable, I'll freely admit). With a very few exceptions, mostly in poetry, everything I've been reading (or listening to: I've been doing the same with music) has been because people tell me to read it. And I'm not sure how that feeling sits with me. My eyes have been opened so some amazing artists and writers because of these recommendations, and in some cases they've led me to make my own discoveries, but still, how little of my reading/listening came of my own initiative is interesting considering in the past, I mostly just browsed sections of the bookstore and came up with titles that sounded interesting when I wanted something to read. Just a difference in approach, I guess. And it creates a bond with the person who recommended it to you (Ah, see, I just knew you'd love it! What'd you think of the end, with x and such happening to so-and-so?...). 

So...I'm not unhappy, just pensive, and wondering where things go from here. In terms of everything, not just lecture.

That was a lot of rambling; I'm sorry. (Pertinent) updates as they come.

Pre-Break Madness

It's been a crazy past couple of weeks, rushing here and there and trying to get all these things done before break. Once I get through exam week things should be much calmer since I'll be done with school, but between French and junior thesis and Los Angeles and the GSA it looks like I'm going to be on my feet pretty much until the day I leave. But that's not a bad thing :)

So, I guess I'll start with the news immediately pertaining to France: I finally have my departure dates! I'll be leaving New Mexico on the twenty-eighth at around seven in the morning, get into New York later that afternoon, have my pre-departure orientation, sleep (if I can), and then my flight for Paris leaves at eleven pm the next evening to arrive at about eleven am. I still don't know where I'll be going after Paris, but all things in good time, I guess.

The POCC/SDLC Conference went amazingly well. To be honest, most of the information presented in the workshops wasn't new to me, but I learned worlds from the other students there. It was incredibly moving and powerful to see so many people who had never felt safe or represented find the space to be able to stand up and say, "Yes, this is who I am, and I'm proud of it." It gave me a lot of things to question in myself and in my community, as well as the tools to work through those questions. I've had and been having so many great discussions with people stemming from the conference; I just regret that I don't have the time to talk to everyone I'd like to talk to. It's difficult to condense, especially for the five-second, afterthought, "So, how was that thing in New Orleans?" But still, I feel like I came out of the experience changed on a profound level: more self-confident, more comfortable in expressing my opinions, and better able to work strategies for building a more inclusive community. Definitely worth it. I hope I can go again next year. 

The adjustment to being back has been a little difficult in terms of catching up with everything that I missed and keeping up with the new material, along with working to help set the agenda for the first GSA meeting, which was today. 

It's been a long, intense process in getting it set up, and the turnout was just incredible: seven or so faculty members and around twenty-five/thirty students. Everything went smoothly-- we even got done a couple minutes early-- and at this rate I think that the group will be ready to start in with activities and events when school gets back in in January. I'm really going to miss being a part of it while I'm abroad, but I'll have the entire year next year and hopefully I'll be able to come to some of the January meetings before I leave. Mainly, though, I'm just happy that all of our efforts has finally come to something concrete.

I thought about how at this time last year, I was only just starting to come out to my friends, and would have been nervous to even show up at a GSA meeting, never mind help to direct it. Amazing how much progress can be made in so little time. 

I'm curious to see how things are similar and different for LGBT students (and just for LGBT people in general) in France.

Updates as they come.