FIELD NOTE 5.51 - This is real.

There are days when I wake up and I have to remind myself that life here is real. The French language is alive and well. Life here will go on for these people just the same after I leave as it has for their entire lives.
I know all this, and yet I still have to remind myself to remember this.
There are times when I forget that French is something more than a language spoken in the span of classes or that France is a real country and not an abstract place on a map. This is what studying it in the United States has done to me. Or maybe I just did it to myself by losing scope of it all.
Even now when I wake up in my room here I sometimes wonder if when I actually open my eyes and take stock of where I am, I will find myself back in Virginia and all this reduced to a memory, something infinitely more abstract than a classroom.

FIELD NOTE 5.50 - Kebabs.

After a day of sequestering myself inside my dorm room transferring a semester's worth of notes from one notebook to another and drinking seemingly endless cups of tea, I was surprised to find Darryl at my door telling me that it was nearly 19h00 and to get my shoes on for kebabs.
What passed was an evening spent at what Mari assured me was "the best kebab restaurant in Nantes" - and after our wonderful meal there, I would definitely have to agree - followed by an hour of random wandering, stopping at a bar to say hello to a friend, and ice cream in front of the château.
It was a wonderful night, filled with many little moments that made me fall in love with Nantes all over again.
And so as I came back to my room with the notebooks and books strewn over my desk and bed, I walked over to the window and rolled down the shade, piled the books and wrote a single question on the page of my notes: Will he come home after all?

FIELD NOTE 5.49 - "Life of Leisure."

I stumbled across this song today and it's lyrics seemed oddly appropriate for my life right now as I've begun trying to talk myself into packing and as I'm finding the smell of my luggage bringing back way too many memories.

Life was leisure, learning French words
And staying in white rooms without any style
Mailing letters, and taking pictures
We put each others in a drawer for awhile

But when will it all fall through
What else can I tell you
You just can't turn me on and off
You just can't turn me on and off

We're always drinking, and we're always playing
And someone's always trying too hard
So book the tickets, and please her parents
She is lovely and he is really smart

And when will it all fall through
What else can I tell you
You just can't turn me on and off
You turn me on and off

At first you believed it
And now you don't believe
At first you could see it
Why don't you (believe)?

The future's glowing out of focus
Our talk is cheap but the phone bill is not
And how can one word mean another
And why am I staying up alone in the dark

When will it all fall through
What else can I tell you
You just cant turn me on and off
You turn me on and off

When will it all fall through
(Cause I know it will)
What else can I tell you
You just can't turn me on and off, on and off
You turn me on and off

Rainer Maria, "Life of Leisure"

FIELD NOTE 5.48 - Braving the cheese bar.

At E. Leclerc customers are given the choice of shopping the pre-sliced cheese or going to the cheese bar and choosing for themselves which cheeses they would like and having them cut for them personally.
Normally I settle for the pre-cut cheeses because I find the scowls on the women working the cheese bar to be a little unsettling. But today all that was pre-cut was 6 to 9 month old comté and I wanted a 20-month so I had no choice but to use the bar. Well, that and the fact that I'm leaving in a week made me less hesitant.
Surprisingly I ordered my cheese easily enough and found it to a highly enjoyable experience. I tell myself that when I get to Paris that I will try to survive on wine, cheese, and bread for the month. But something tells me the time will come when I miss the quaint little cheese bar inside E. Leclerc once it has been replaced by the tiny Parisian supermarkets.

FIELD NOTE 5.47 - Results.

Exams ended for me last Monday. After that the rest of the week was passed by the jury in deliberation as to which of us should receive our diplômes universitaires, little pieces of papers saying that we successfully completed niveau 5 of the IRFFLE program.
The sad truth is that these diplomas hold no real merit or value outside the Université of Nantes. And yet even knowing that fact, I still couldn't stop a part of myself from wanting one. Even if it was meaningless, I still have a habit of collecting papers and skills useless in the "real world" of business and marketing.
So today the results were supposed to be posted at 8h00, which really translated to 17h30. I went with Darryl after dinner and searched for my name on the impossibly tiny spreadsheet and followed the line with my finger to the word "passed" which was followed by a note of "très bien". Looking at all the other people's final scores I realized that mine was the 4th highest of my level and, of those, I was the only to have been in France for only a semester, the rest having been here a year. So maybe I can speak and write French better than I thought and maybe I don't always give myself enough credit.
So even though my diplôme universitaire might be just a meaningless paper in the United States, to me it is now a mark, a badge of something more.

FIELD NOTE 5.46 - Stakeout.

Darryl ordered a pair of Vans from the United States that have been in Nantes since 8 May. For the past week DHL has been trying to deliver them to the residence but each time has been unsuccessful because they can't leave the package unless she pays them 12 euro for the delivery.
The residence, being French, doesn't bother to send the DHL courier to her room or call her even though she has left her cell phone number at the accueil. So she has asked me to help her.
I have called DHL and asked them when they will next deliver the package and their answer was not a French one that I was expecting, but more familiar: "It will be there some time between 9 in the morning and 6 at night." Seems some things are the same no matter where you are and I wondered if French cable men are the same. Probably so.
So today we conducted a stakeout in her room, both of us looking out the window with anticipation each time a car could be heard in the residence's driveway. Thus passed 6 hours. The package didn't come today but I can't really lie and say that today was not enjoyable. No, I think the day spent sitting in her room watching old episodes of Judge Judy and filling the hours with random conversations was perfect.

FIELD NOTE 5.45 - Life is life.

If there is one thing that studying abroad has made me come to appreciate more than anything else it is letters. I used to send and receive emails and messages without sparing them a second thought. Now they have become lifelines, little reminders that there are still some people who remember me across the ocean.
Today I received a message that ended: Profite à 200% de tout ce que tu vas vivre en France, tu ne seras jamais plus le même après. Et même si tu restes en Virginie, ce sera un autre Cole qui sera à la fac! Bisous! Tu sais que je t'adore! Now I can't get these words out of my head.
I know they true because I feel their truth resonating inside me. But I wonder now how this change is going to play out. Before France I didn't know where my future was heading or what I wanted with my life. After France I know this still won't change. I am still just as lost as before but here I don't fear that as much when I'm surrounded by 15 other international students all trying to do the same thing: start a life for themselves.
And when I go back with this newly started life still fresh in my mind, what then?