C'est ma vie :)

so as time creeps closer its all hitting me like a ton of bricks. Quick recap: I finally had my visa appointment, i'll admit it was awhile ago (August 5th) it went something like this. A pretty rail thin woman with soft eyes and a welcoming french accent took my passport along with several other documents. She also began to give me a little history on the name of my school. Lucie Aubrac. Apparently she was a great force in the resistance and well-renowned in France. While she was going on i couldn't help but feel giddy, that this really irrelevant conversation was really a morceau of what is to come in France. Maybe i'm just an optimist, i tend to see the good and excitement in everything. I also stumbled upon the website for the Office of Tourism of Bollene and its made me more certain of my decision to live in Bollene and not commute from Avignon. Here take a gander and i think you'll fall in love with the city too :) : http://www.bollenetourisme.com/index.asp

It's exactly a month (eek!) till i'm crossing oceans to Paris :) Although i'm very excited i do have my concerns. For example: i still don't have a place to live. However i am very encouraged by my contact person who has been a very big help, she is sweet and has even offered to house me for a few days so she's pretty awesome in my book!

I wrote the first half of this blog this morning and in the second half i've received some information that changes everything……. How you ask, well I found out this afternoon that another assistant who just received her arête today is assigned to Bollene!!! Which is awesome because at the very least I now know somebody who is going to be in the exact same city as me. This of course means that A.) I may have a possible roommate and more importantly B.) I’ll have someone else to talk to who will know where I’m coming from. So needless to say this new development has made my world a little rosier :)

I decided that I want to make a small list of immediate things I want to do once I get to Bollene, here’s the list:

1.) Find a place to live that’s not a cardboard box
2.) Get a cell phone
3.) Find the nearest internet café (who knows if I’ll have internet at “home”)
4.) Visit the local Mosque (Mosquée Fath)
5.) Get a bike
6.) Get involved with the community activities of Bollene
7.) Study for the GRE because Halima has decided she wants to be a Grad Student
8.) Be the best teacher’s assistant I can be (fingers crossed)

That’s all I have for now……. I’m sure the list will only continue to grow. It’s still surreal to me how fast the 4 months since i found out i got accepted has gone by. Even now it still doesn’t seem real and I don’t think it will be for me until I’m walking onto that plane. I still have tons to do like pack and drop my car off in Albuquerque but everything seems to be falling into place :) until next time folks

Bisous,
Halima