Last few hours in Aix

In a few hours, I'll be walking my suitcases to the bus station, hopping a bus to Marseille Airport, and checking in for my flight to Dublin (with a quick pit stop in Amsterdam).

This is goodbye, Aix, and goodbye to my French life. I think what I'll miss the most is living with multiple languages.

Sure, it's tough sometimes. I turned in a literature final the other day in which I described the main character's struggle with "length" (longueur) instead of "lethargy" (langueur). I ordered the wrong thing for dinner a few nights ago because I got sick of asking the waiter to repeat himself and instead just responded "Yes" to everything he asked. It was still delicious.

But I can understand practical French in most day to day settings now (also discovered recently that I can still understand basic Mandarin as well, but that's a different story). And I can get my point across coherently, even if not necessarily grammatically correct. Plus, I'm a fabulous eavesdropper.

I watch Netflix with French subtitles and laugh when I find French phrases like "It's not your onions!" instead of the English "None of your beeswax!" even though both make very little sense when read literally.

I'm still continuing Harry Potter in French, which is fun because I usually end up playing a game of "Is that a French word or is that a made up magical word?" and 50% of the time I'm wrong. I salute whoever translated the books, though - in order to keep up the ruse of Tom Riddle using an anagram to form "I am Voldemort" or in this case, "Je suis Voldemort," they had to make his middle name Elvis.

 

 Jokes aside, I'll still be looking for more ways to keep up my French.

I'll definitely miss the weather here. It's not quite the heat of Sevilla, but a far cry from the frigid cold of Boston. 

Still, it's been tough to get into the holiday spirit when it's 60 degrees out. In the morning when it's colder I listen to Christmas songs and by the time the temperature creeps up past 50 it just doesn't feel right anymore. 

So, I guess I'm just Dreaming of a White Christmas....

(But after Christmas, I'd like to go right back to 60 degree days, please and thank you.)