Appreciation

I've never felt so lost. I've never felt so much at home. Please write my folks and throw away my keys.

I've been waiting years for that song lyric to apply to me. I can't say it does yet, and I honestly don't know when it will, but I hope that someday, I'll be able to say it and mean it.

Lately, I've seen a lot of people in the program getting tired (okay, it's mainly the Brits) and I know one person (American) is leaving. He says he's gotten what he wanted out of the program. I suppose if you feel that way. There's a difference between feeling you've done what you came to do and leaving early as opposed to quitting in the middle because it's just too hard.

I never once considered quitting in China, even on those days when I just wanted to punch the next Chinese person I saw, those days where if I heard 'hallow!' yelled at me, I was going to snap, not even on those days. It never occurred to me to just say, "I quit. Send me home." Then again, I had also signed a real contract that said if I quit, I had to pay money to get out of the contract. France somehow has no real contract. I don't feel like there's anything legal keeping us here. If we picked up and left tomorrow, there isn't anything they could do.

But I still don't understand the people who quit.

Have they not gone through what the rest of us did to get here? Do they not want it as much? What were they expecting? To live in a huge city with great public transportation and super friendly French people? It's just not realistic.

I was looking at jobs in the US today because I will have to get one when I get back, but if you think about it, my qualifications for any type of professional job are very slim. I speak French. Woo. That's all. I'm qualified to live in France. On a good day. It's enough to make a girl want to think of Grad School just to have something else to do. I'm not sure I could make it another 2-3 years in school, though.

I guess this entry doesn't have a point really except people who don't want to come here, shouldn't be here. Granted, I don't love teaching and no, I don't want to be a teacher, but that's not why I'm here. I knew that long before I came here. I'm here in some vague hope that France is the culmination of something in my life, as if it was something I was working towards all those years, but essentially it may only be a stepping stone to something else. God only knows what that something else is, although I'd rather like to be let in on it, thanks.

It's 10PM now over here in France and I have to leave for work at 8AM, so I'll leave this here.

To leave you all on a lighter-hearted note, the lol-worthy moment of Tuesdays classes:

New lesson on prepositions (in, on, under, behind, in front of, next to, between). The teacher uses the kids as examples: "Sara is next to John." And Sara moves next to John. Etc. So then the teacher says, "Thomas is inside Nathan. Is it possible?" If you didn't laugh, then you have a cleaner mind than me ;] The teacher said no. My brain said yes.

Goodnight.