Belated

June 17, 2008

Just a short note to say that I’m here in France.

The flight was long and I was in the middle seat, but I sat next to a lovely woman named Barb who was visiting her husband in Amsterdam. We related to each other about how great Melbourne is. I watched “Penelope” and an episode of “30 Rock” and “Friends”, all pretty enjoyable. I've been able to cry at the drop of a hat lately, I'm not sure why but I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being here. When I was on the plane and all the lights had been turned out, I dropped my head down and cried for a bit. I don’t think anyone noticed, they were all sleeping and my hair was over my eyes anyways.

Landing in Paris I pretty smoothly got onto the train to Angers (although the line to buy a ticket was ridiculously long and slow) and slept more on that 2 hour train ride To Angers than the 9 hour flight to Paris. Mr. and Mm. Suave found me pretty easily and took me around on some errands with them in Angers and one in Jarze. They let me sleep in the car while they went into the mall for some things and I fell asleep really fast. Mm. Suave went to get a massage so me and Mr. went and got some Tea together with some broken conversation, mostly involving pointing to a newspaper. He was very kind and bought me tea, some morning groceries and a trashy French Celeb mag. On this whole adventure they would scold each other when ever they were tempted to use English with me; apparently they got the message that I wanted a good immersion experience.

We eventually pulled up to the Chateau and I finally saw it in person, beautiful. The inside is a maze of rooms and hallways, my room and apartment is in the attic (3^rd floor) and is great, it has a balcony for both the bedroom and the bathroom. The wall paper is old, 70’s and excellent and my bed is huge. I love it. Why do I still feel like crying though? Is it because I miss Jon? Because I know how alone I’ll feel and how tough learning a new language is? Because I miss my family? All of thee above? I need to get over myself and enjoy myself because I can’t tie myself down to the computer talking to friends all the time. I can’t stay up in my room listening to music and playing solitaire, I need to immerse myself and make this experience the best yet. I’m glad to know that people are praying for me and thinking of me as I go through this. I hope God hears their prayers. I think this is going to be a good learning experience for me. I’ll get some time to myself to think about my future, about what’s important to focus on, about who is important to focus on. I’ll get to do some deep thinking about me and Jon’s relationship while taking some distance from him. Maybe there has just been a big fat cry in me that’s been itching to get out and hasn’t gotten a chance to fully be able to because it was always pushed back into a lump in my throat….I need to just let it out. Well this is the end for now.

Good night.