As I'm sitting here, looking at the map of where I and my fellow exchangers will be staying in France during our study abroad, I can't help but feel an overwhelming, slightly heady mix of fear, excitement and joy. The closer that September 6th gets, the more real that everything seems. Almost eight months ago, when I first started filling out applications and getting interviewed for different study abroad organizations, I never actually thought that I would get accepted or anything (and I didn't get accepted by some, cough-Rotary International-cough), but here I am. I even got a host family not even a month after I was accepted, and there are still people without one. Which makes me feel extremely grateful because now I'm not waiting around anxiously, checking my email every few seconds, waiting for a cheery yet slightly generic email from AFS telling me that I got a host family finally. Everything about my study abroad seems so perfect, the village my host family lives in is so little and cute, the city that I'll be going to school in looks awesome, and my host family owns a boulangerie/pâtisserie! Which is awesome for a few reasons. One reason being, who wouldn't want to live with a French baker? The other reason being is that I want to become a pastry chef, so I think I'll have the perfect opportunity to see what a pastry chef goes through every day. Talk about serendipity.

I guess the only thing left to do besides going to the French Consulate in D.C is wait. I really hate waiting though, its probably one of my least favorite things to do because when you have to wait for something, there's really nothing you can do to make the time go by faster. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hate waiting and it sucks.

In other news, I graduated from high school July 6th! Now I'm just waiting to get my diploma in the mail and it's taking the school forever to send it. I think the fact that I graduated a year early is making everything even more surreal than it already was. Never in a million years did I think that I would do study abroad and graduate a whole year early. Part of me kind of regrets doing that because I feel as if I rushed a big part of my life, but on the other hand I'm still doing what would be my senior year only I'm doing it in another country. Anyway, that's all I really have to write for now.

Au Revoir !