I am now a private schooler and other happenings

After reflecting on these last two days of school, I am certain of one thing: God went ahead of me.  Even though I had to listen to an incessant stream of French which I did not fully comprehend, God went ahead of me and placed in my path extremely kind students and understanding professors.  I recognized this when a girl whose name I didn't know changed places so that she could sit next to me and help me understand even though she had just met me.  (I now know her name and she is a good friend.)  God reminded me that he chose my professors when I walked into German class and responded to my professors's German ramble only with a long, blank stair.  (Thankfully, she's incredibly nice and now knows that I understand not one word of German and so she won't give me a grade.)  Doing school in French is definitely difficult, as I found out when the French teacher handed me a fairly simple questionnaire about my reading habits and I struggled to complete it; but nonetheless, God is with me and that gives me courage and strength.

I'm very aware as I'm writing this that it is not very put-together, and I apologize.  I'm just beginning to realize how much speaking another language messes with your brain.  If you've never had the experience before, let me tell you: it's exhausting!  I was looking forward to typing in English because I know English better, but in writing this I've found that my brain is too exhausted to organize my thoughts even in English.  Realizing all this has given me an enormous amount of respect for any immagrant, whether they know the language or not.  I've always been tempted to judge immigrants based on their level of English, and, more often than not, any judgement I gave was negative.  Now, I tip my hat to any immigrant.  If they didn't know English and they still decided to come to the US, they are incredibly brave and they have a hard road ahead of them for learning English.  If they did know English, good for them, but being bilingual is still exhausting and not easy at all.  There's a little something for you all that I've learned from coming here.

And now, like I promised, some pictures. I only have a few (and when I say few, I mean few!), but I hope they'll give you a little glimpse into my life here.

 

After arriving the first day, I was so exhausted that I just shoved all my shirts in the drawer and closed it.

 

After a good night's sleep, I felt rested enough to actually arrange them.

 

This is my wonderful night stand that my host mother painted herself.  You may not be able to see it very well, but it's very lovely and it even has the same color blue as my alarm clock!

 

This Tintin board is right outside the bathroom and is almost life sized, so it makes me jump just about every time I leave the bathroom.

 

And, even in France, I can't escape Manassas.  Can you guess what they named their fish?

 

And that's all folks.  Maybe I'll take some more pictures for my next post and maybe in my next post I will be awake enough to adequately express my thoughts in English.  Maybe, just maybe.