Host Family? Check! Well, sort of...

I finally know where I'm living! What a relief it is to know where in France I will be staying. It's been a nerve-racking few months checking the mail everyday to find nothing there. But I know now, and everything is going to work out! I'm going to be living in Marseille with a welcome host family. This means that I will only be staying with them for up to three months. Nicole will be my (temporary) host mother. She is wonderful! I emailed her the first night I found out, and she replied back the next day! She seems to be very enthusiastic about hosting me, even if it is only for a few months. Her son and his wife live next door with their baby son who is just over a year old! I'm so excited that there is a baby! We'll be able to speak about the same amount of french! (I'm only half kidding) :). There's also going to be a French professor from New Zealand staying with Nicole and me for the first month of my stay.

Everyone in the family speaks pretty good English, and they've all been exchange students with AFS. Nicole's daughter-in-law is actually American! She's from San Diego. This may or may not be a good thing. On the one hand, it will be easier to communicate with them. On the other, however, it will not help my French to be speaking English all of the time. I've decided that I am going to ask them to only speak French to me.

Nicole enrolled me in school. It's about 500 meters away from where I'm going to be living! I'll be able to walk to school. It also looks like I'm going to be under a half a mile away from the beach as well!  It's going to be wonderful.

This is just a temporary situation though, so AFS will be working on finding me a permanent family. I don't have a clue how it works in France, but here in the US they try to keep people in the same communities when they have a welcome family so they don't have to change schools. I hope this is the case!

We, the American AFS students, start off with orientation in New York on September 1st. We fly out September 2nd and arrive in Paris on the 3rd. From there, we have a three-day orientation in Paris. After orientation, everyone takes the train to their host communities where their host families will pick them up. For me, that means traveling just under 500 miles from Paris to Marseille. Then, the next day I go to my first day of school! Talk about a crazy first week! I don't know whether or not it will be the first day of school for everyone so I may stick out like a sore thumb (more then I already will) if it is not.

I have two weeks left, and there's so much to do and not enough time. I have to start packing (I know, I said I would start fifteen days before I left, but I didn't count on being away from home when that day rolled around!), make sure I see all my family and friends before I leave, and make sure I don't leave without having some lobster!

If you want to read up on Marseille, Wikipedia has an extensive article on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille).

Visa? Check!

The other day, to my surprise, a FedEx van showed up in my driveway. I never expected the woman to step out with an envelope containing my long-stay student visa. It was a whole week earlier than expected!  The woman asked me why I was so excited and when I told her it was my visa she thought I meant a credit card! I decided not to correct her. Anyway, I made it over the final hurdle! I'm accepted into the program, I've started my packing lists, I've attended all of the orientations that I can possibly attend until I leave, and I got my VISA! I am all set to fly off to France, well besides the not having a family thing. It will come...eventually.

I've decided to start packing when I get to fifteen days before I leave, that way I don't get to the last day and I still haven't packed everything I want to take. I'm still not sure how I'm going to fit everything that I want to take into my bag that cannot exceed forty four pounds. It should be interesting.

It's getting down to my last few weeks, and I'm starting to do a lot of "lasts," for a year at least. There was the last beach trip with the girls today, and there have been a lot of goodbyes to people who I won't see until I come back. When I think about it too much it makes me sad, but then I remember that because of these lasts, I'll have many, many firsts. I'll try new things, and make new friends, and make new memories. In a year's time, I'll be back home to see everyone again. It's weird to think that I'll have to go through this sadness again in less than a year.