FIELD NOTE 4.10 - April showers.

Today Nantes can't seem to decide what kind of weather it would like - it has gone back and forth from sunshine to rain at least 5 times now. It's a silly thing to notice, but for some reason I feel as if I am becoming tied to the weather here - I never go anywhere without my umbrella and a jacket just in case the weather suddenly changes.
I guess this is a good thing.
It has been April for 4 days and it has rained at least once a day for those 4 days. I am now beginning to realize that what they say about April showers is indeed true in Nantes. I realize this, however, only after a horribly embarrassing moment in the kitchen with Darryl.
I was looking out the window as has become my habit here lately while Darryl was finishing up with washing her dishes. It was raining, it is always raining in these stories. I said, "I thought April is supposed to be the month of flowers..." She just stopped her washing and looked at me and said, "April showers, bring May flowers" before she started laughing. I laughed, too - still the same, my eyes never left the window.
I am still looking out the window, still looking at the rain. If if what they say is true of April showers here in Nantes, so too shall I hope what they say of flowers in the approaching month will also be true.

FIELD NOTE 4.9 - A mistake.

It is now 23h47 and I realize that today around 13h30 I accidentally said "Je ne pouvais pas faire ça" when I should have said "Je ne pourrais pas faire ça."
Sometimes it seems like I'm not really learning anything but then the little moments like these when I realize my mistakes make me wonder if I don't give myself enough credit. Still, hopefully the time will come when the error and the realization are a little closer together. But first baby steps, baby steps.

FIELD NOTE 4.8 - Bittersweet.

Bittersweet. Today I have come to hate this word. I have heard it 3 times in emails and messages from people who tell me how bittersweet buying my ticket must have been. Bittersweet was the word used. Bittersweet.
I want to shout that there is no need to give this a taste, that it is not bittersweet or anything else, it merely is. Sooner or later the ticket would have to be purchased - it just happened sooner than I would have liked. But, please, let's not give it a taste - let's just let it be. A reality, nothing more at this point.

FIELD NOTE 4.7 - A rainbow in Nantes.

Tonight as Darryl and I were cooking dinner it began to storm. It was one of those wonderful storms, the kind that you see coming as an approaching sheet of falling rain. And in the middle of it all, as I was cooking my couscous and she was cooking her grilled egg and cheese sandwich, we saw a rainbow start to form. Weak at first, the rainbow quickly grew until it eventually became a double rainbow. Darryl said that this an extremely rare thing to see and told me to make a wish before it disappeared.
I made a wish. Not because I have any real hope that it will become true, but because it somehow seemed wrong not to. Though it may be against tradition, I will tell you what I wished for: I wished for luck and a bushel of rosemary.

FIELD NOTE 4.6 - Ticket.

In the hour it took my clothes to go through their wash cycle I decided to do something I had been putting off all morning: purchasing my plane ticket back to America. It wasn't particularly difficult or time-consuming - in fact, I completed the entire process in under 5 minutes - but by the end of it I was drained.
I was told once in 9th grade that, when given the option of finding out exactly when and how they would die, most people would refuse to look because were they to know this, every second after receiving this knowledge would be tainted. Leaving France is not a death, but it is an end just the same.
And now I have a date and a time: 29 June at 11h05.

FIELD NOTE 4.5 - Getting the hang of laundry.

Friday morning has become synonymous with "laundry day" since I don't have class until 13h30. And so each Wednesday (or Thursday if I am feeling particularly lazy one week) I sign up to use Machine 1 at 10h30. This week was no exception.
There have been some issues in the past with Machine 1 when the person before me has either started late and forced me to wait a few minutes while their load finishes (no big deal) or when the person completely forgets to come back and get their finished load for more than 20 minutes after it's finished (a slightly bigger deal). This morning though when I walked into the laundry room to use the machine I had signed up for the minutes left on the machine read 44. After a few awkward exchanges with the woman at the accueil I finally decided to load my clothes into the empty Machine 3 and prayed that no one would come expecting to use that particular machine.
The rest passed quite uneventfully save for the fact that when I finally pulled my clothes from the dryer today they were actually fully dry - a first in all the times I've done laundry here at Fresche Blanc.
So maybe I am finally getting the hang of this laundry thing. And you know what they say about laundry leading to independence...or they would if they had any idea how hard a time I've had with it!

FIELD NOTE 4.4 - Facebook comment.

Tonight you wrote, "I love our lives cole!" and I smiled, feeling my own Yes! growing inside me.