I think I say this every month but wow. It has almost been 3 months. In school we are changing from Handball to Running, I have already had 1/4 breaks from school. I have gone through the honeymoon stage and the homesickness and the angry over stupid random differences stages and now its on to normal life.
In just three months I have made so many amazing friends.
First off, Sarah: www.sarahindinan.blogspot.com . <- That is her blog! She is the other exchange student with Rotary in Dinan. We go to the same school, she is from Canada and she is literally one of the only people in my school who speaks English, other than the English teacher. She is soo awesome. We have fallen in love with the coffee machine at our school. We both don't understand why the guy at the door is screaming and hope everyday to just get by him without any problems. She is one of the only people who I can vent to properly. ( It is so hard to try and vent in a different language) I am also super jealous of her creativeness. Just read her blog, she does an amazing job at writing very creatively!
Next is a friend I have made in my class. Her name is Maiwenn. She has helped me so so much through out the year so far! She would remind/tell me about things that I did not catch the teacher say. At the beginning she really slowed down her speaking and if I still did not understand she explained it to me as best as she could. That is probably one of the most important/helpful things as an exchange student is to have someone who will slow down, explain, motion, ect. to get you to understand. A person who will spend time helping you to improve, whether it is writing the word on your notebook for you or repeating the same word over and over to try and improve your French R's which are soo difficult but I am starting to get them! Maiwenn made: "Le crayon de Boris est dans le trouse." to work on my R's. Haha :) Anyways she is really awesome.
Okay this list could really go on a while but I am going to stop with number 3: Brogan. Brogan is another RYE student who actually lives a few hours away from me but he is really awesome and we talk a lot of Facebook and whenever we are around each other at Rotary events. He is one of those people who are so fun to be around and can pretty much be friends with anyone and everyone. He is pretty much the definition of an exchange student. Oh and he also has the cutest Quebec/France accent ever. Yes he is from Canada too.
Weird that the girl from the U.P. would naturally have two really good friends that are Canadian!
Yah I really need to stop myself now because I could go on about Faith, Manon, Naz, and a lot of people from school and rotary and yah.
3 months also means I should be understanding pretty much everything. I love looking back even one month. I think back and see no progress but then I think about it a little more and I DO see the progress. The little random things I learn every day help so much.
Another thing I have learned is how slow and progressive language learning is. I always heard stories of people randomly freaking out because they realised they are thinking in a different language or had a dream in another language. I always thought it was like one day you started thinking everything in a different language or one day you went from dreaming all English to all French. Though it is not like that at all. I have had dreams that have been in Chinese, English, French, and even Franglais. I also think in French and English, the language I think in depends a lot on who I am around. When you are on exchange everything is just "mixed up". Your brain does not know what to think. For the first few weeks you feel so stupid because your vocabulary has had to be severly cut in both languages to make yourself understood. You zone out a lot because you are so tired and can not focus another second of the language being spoken. For the first few weeks all my dreams were me at home now they are me on exchange/me at home, after exchange.
Anyways I do really like it here and I can already tell there will be reverse culture shock when I go home. Going back to kissing people on the cheeks as a foreign thing that you would rarely/never do to the way toilets work, to speaking English all the time. I think the little things will catch me off gaurd the most though. The things I don't even think about being foreign or different anymore. The things I have forgotten about will be the strangest because I was not prepared for it. Though it must also be weird for my parents when I do go home. I mean when I come back I speak a whole new language, have met people from multiple countries, have traveled on my own, who eats a different way, ect.
Though I should not be thinking about that yet right?! I still have 8 months here! Which I am sooo happy about. If I was in the short term program I would be leaving so soon and I would not be ready! Though after a year I don't know how many people are ready to go home either.