*one month*

Hello again, I'm back! As I shared before, I now get to blog for two platforms - this one (allllllll mine) and SYA's.... The prompt for the first month was "one month" (surprise, surprise) and I just sent in my submission - and wanted to share it with this blog as well. In the future, the posts that are for SYA will have their titles in between two asterisks (*title*) so you can tell wthem apart. I will also post the link to the other SYA campus bloggers as soon as it is posted... I hope you enjoy it!

One Month

I honestly can't wrap my head around the fact that I've already been in Rennes for a little more than a month, yet here I am trying to write a blog post about it. When I began thinking about the prompt, I realized that I'm stuck in a strange limbo - on one hand it feels as though I was in the US yesterday but on the other I feel as though I've been in Rennes forever. 

I keep waiting to wake up from this dream and go straight back to my every day routine, where school ends at 3:30 and my friends have know each other since before Pre-K. But then I remember the incredible situation I've landed in... Even though school here ends at 18h00 (that's 6 pm, a la française) I've already adjusted to the schedule - trust me I have no complaints about Wednesday and Friday half-days. I never thought it would happen, but Ive even found myself memorizing the bus schedule for my line - ligne 72 - and making it to the stop on time every day. 

The people I've met here are incredible, too. Just a few days ago my friends started to tell a story and then stopped when she realized we wouldn't understand the context - we hadn't been with her in her pre-SYA life when part one of the story took place. She then explained it all, and everyone ended up laughing, but for me the whole thing emphasized how quickly I was able to connect with my amazing new class mates. 

Other people, like my rowing team-mates and my host brothers, have been no different. Yesterday, at a discussion group at the Franco American Institute (if you're ever in Rennes, I highly recommend checking it out) my classmates and I exchanged stories with French kids our ages. The language obstacle certainly existed, but it disappeared when we all laughed about getting pushed off the metro at a stop or almost being late to school due to being trapped on the metro by a rainy day induced crowd. 

I really do think that my struggles to speak French have begun paying off, and language isn't the only thing that gotten easier - I feel like I've adjusted pretty well to Rennais life. I really do think that the entire class of 2016 has a metamorphosis of sorts - were certainly not the same scared kids that met for the first time in the Boston airport. We've all had crazy adjustment experiences, and it certainly hasn't always been easy, but in the end it all ends up beings either a learning experience or a funny story to tell to people back home, or both. Just in the first month, there have already been so many incredible thing that I can't not be super excited for the rest of the year. I'm about to head off on a trip to the Loire valley with all my classmates, which promises to be the next on my list of incredible French experiences...I can't wait to write about them all. Until next time, xoxolu.