I feel like I'm living someone else's life, actually, rather than a double-life. At least that's how I feel at the moment.
I left for France three months ago. There's a post in my dashboard that I started while waiting in the Gulfport airport, but I never published it. I re-read it just now, everything is different.
Everything different than how I left it. For the better though, so much better in some respects.
There are no words to describe The Abbey Program 2010. The students were awesome, so were the faculty, the people in the town...
Now it all feels like a dream. It's like I'm returning from my own study abroad experience again, but 6 years ago it wasn't this difficult. Or maybe I've blocked it out of my memory.
I'm back in my house - a house which I barely lived in after I bought it before moving to France. My best friend and room mate is engaged and I'm the M.O.H. (very exciting) and must research how to be a good one of those. A friend had a baby. I have a new supervisor at work and Laura Messer is moving to Austin (congrats Laura!). I'm in a different relationship than when I left - and this time I fell super hard, which is so much more than scary. My sister graduated suma cum laude from college and starts grad school in the fall. I start back to school in June.
I've been back in the U.S. a week now and I still find myself searching for familiar faces from what feels like a previous life now - my previous life in France. Jaffe Cropper came to visit me in the office and all these emotions flooded in proving that it all really happened. Thank God. Chelsea Lewis came in too - and didn't even give me time to stand up for a hug. My eyes misted over immediately. It is so rewarding to be a part of the experience these amazing students go through abroad.
I can't surround myself with enough photographs from the past three months.
The upside to all of this (what I'm viewing as the upside, anyway) is that in just one month I'll be back en route to Europe again - London, this time, for the British Studies Program. Perhaps that will provide a refreshing breath, enough to sustain me for 5 months back "home" before another Abbey Program.
Hmm. That's all for now.
