Welp. Here I am. Not in France yet, but closer than I’ve ever been before. I’m sitting in London Heathrow, waiting for the afternoon to arrive so I can board a plane to Marseille, a city a half-hour from Aix. London Heathrow is a familiar yet unfamiliar void, filled to capacity with crowds and shops and consumerism, but the shop names are all new to me. I recognize Harrod’s and the Sunglass Hut straight ahead, but it’s odd to look around and not immediately see a Chili’s within walking distance.<\/p>\n
Leaving my family yesterday was definitely the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I hope I’ve made the right decision, studying in Aix for four whole months<\/em>, because right now, I feel like I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. Going to school in EUROPE??? For FOUR MONTHS???? Choosing a life away from your family and friends – the only people who actually LIKE you – to interact with complete strangers who won’t even speak the same LANGUAGE as you??? Who does that??? What was I thinking?<\/p>\n I meet my host family today, as well as my housemate. My one wish in my housing application (well, besides my fancy of living with a family who owns a cat) was that I’d be with a family who would accept me as I am, social anxiety and really really really<\/em> terrible French and all. I think if I can find that comfort, maybe I won’t be as scared as I am now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welp. Here I am. Not in France yet, but closer than I’ve ever been before. I’m sitting in London Heathrow, waiting for the afternoon to arrive so I can board a plane to Marseille, a city a half-hour from Aix. London Heathrow is a familiar yet unfamiliar void, filled to capacity with crowds and shops…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france-iau-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16292,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions\/16292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}