Wednesday, December 15, 2010

It's over.

It's taken me a while to get up the guts to write this post. It seemed as though every time I went to write it, it made it real... the fact that my exchange has finished.

I was about to write 'my life in France is over,' except it's not, really. It's only just begun. I spoke with my host mummy today (I love her) and Mimi (I love her too) and I realised that there are some people that you will never be able to part ways with.

Leaving was hard. Very hard. I cried a lot and denied it was happening, until we were sitting on the plane, about to leave Paris, and I burst into tears because it was finally over. And so Bree, Millie and I all cried and phoned our friends and parents to let them know that we loved them, to thank them, to just spend those last few minutes with them.

By the way, I finished packing my bags literally just before we left.

Being back is weird. It's like nothing has changed, but at the same time, everything has changed. I am a completely different person to whom I was when I left, and this makes me extremely happy. This makes it somewhat hard with regards to friends and family, but I guess that you just have to wait and see. And in the end, things will be ok. That's probably the main thing that I learnt over there:

"Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing's gonna be alright" (Bob Marley)

I miss France. People say it's hard leaving your home country, but I don't think people ever really talk about what it's like to leave. Leaving France was harder for me, because I knew that this time, I wasn't going to be back in a year. It was for good.

I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss the food (OH MY GOSH I HATE AUSSIE FOOD). I miss my room. I miss my double bed. I miss Mazeres. I miss high school. I miss philosophy class. I miss giving la bise to everyone. I miss the culture. I miss my life.

Exchange was incredible, without a doubt THE best experience of my rather short (so far!) life. I met some wonderful people, learnt a lot about myself and came away from the experience as someone a lot more mature and soft hearted. It was the best, but also the worst. Exchange is the hardest thing I have ever done and I can't recommend it for everyone, but it's something that I will never have any regrets about doing.

"They never said it would be easy. They just said it would be worth it."

And that, dear readers, it the truth.

1 comment:

Nate said...

Very interesting closure to your exchange..
Its definitely a difficult experience to explain, but you expressed it well.