Endings

Wow, yesterday was a long day.
(the flowers I gave my host mom)

But, before that was dinner with my host parents one last time. They brought out some champagne and my host mom made what I believe is a more traditional French dinner...it was rabbit in mustard sauce, salad, red wine, a variety of good cheese, baguette of course, and then crepes for dessert. Very tasty. Then I had to say goodbye, because I was leaving before anyone would be awake in the morning. That was a little weird, and sad. I'm going to miss them.
Then, I didn't get too much sleep...and I woke up a little bit before my alarm was going to go off at 4:40am, left the house at 5:20, and took the metro to meet Becky and Kay. Wow, having a giant heavy bag in the metro and another duffel sucks. I'm pretty sure every random stranger who offered to help and helped me down or up stairs regretted it the second they picked up one end of my bag because it was crazy heavy. Still, we made it to the airport all in one piece. So that was nice. Waited around at the airport, took my flight to Toronto (It was a really long somewhat boring flight and I couldn't sleep that much.) Then went through customs and took my flight into Minneapolis where it was stormy so we had to circle above Minneapolis for a while.
(Some building near Notre Dame)

And now I'm at Carleton. It's wonderful to see everyone again, but really bizarre as well. It should be a fun few days, and I don't think missing Paris will really hit me until I get home to Davis. It was really weird taking the metro that morning, and realizing it was the last time I would take it for a very long time. It was so familiar, and I am going to miss all the little things that to most people are so boring and day-to-day, but I love. It's going to be bizarre not having the language barrier...I'll still probably formulate questions and things in French before going to order something or talk to strangers, which will be funny. And I'm sure phrases will come out in French. It's just all a sort of odd situation. And to top that off, I don't feel that jetlagged at all. Weird.
(last time in the Jardin de Luxembourg.)

All in all, I think that my speaking skills didn't improve as much as I would have liked (I did improve, of course), but my comprehension skills got a million times better. So that's neat. I would love to stay in contact with my host parents, and some day go back, see how the kids grew up, and see my host parents again.