Look out the window...

Just in front of this window is a tree with reddish-brown leaves and some bushes on the ground beneath it. Beyond that is Nathalie's red car, which always sits outside the kitchen window, some white flowers at the school gate, and a red stop sign at the entry to the school parking lot. It's a second-story window, so you can see for a long ways, over the apple orchard across the street and the forest and hills beyond. There's something like a highway running in front of the forest, and every now and then a car drives by.

The front part of the school building runs in front of this window on the left, and you can see into the girls dormitory rooms through the windows on the second floor. On the right there's the roof of a lower wing of the school; I think it's where the cantine food is prepared. Beyond that you can see the tops of two tall houses, and below that there's the thick hedge that runs between the school campus and the houses nearby. There are a lot of trees to the right of the school, tall fir trees with big black birds that you can see from so far away.

7 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day later.

I remember the Friday night in March when we all watched The Return of the King together in the kitchen. I had checked it out from the school library that day, and later I heard Marlene, Heather, and Sarah talking in our hallway, and I stepped out to tell them that I had gotten it and we could watch it that night. Monsieur Richard happened to walk by just then and asked, “What language do you speak when you’re all together?” “Chinese!” Marlene said. “We all speak Chinese.” Later Heather parodied Sam’s line about the ring (“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”) when Frodo hesitated to throw to into Mount Doom as, “I can’t throw it in for you, but I can throw you in!” I laughed so hard.

This will be my last entry in France. As soon as I’m done with this entry, all I have left to do is pack my last few things and sweep my room. Frodo’s monologue at the end of the movie struck me then and comes back to me now. “The Fellowship of the Ring, though eternally bound by friendship and love, was ended. Thirteen months to the day since Gandalf sent us on our long journey, we found ourselves looking upon a familiar sight. We were home. How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back?” When I watched it, I thought, that’s us. We’re the Fellowship of the Assistants, and soon, we’ll be ended.

It’s hard to describe how much I’m going to miss all of them. For the past seven months, we’ve done almost everything together. We were all in a foreign country, far away from our families and friends, so we really had to become friends with each other. And even though I was far away from home, I was never alone, because one of them was always right there, in the computer room or in the kitchen. Even in my own room, I could always tell when Heather had just gotten up or gone to bed, because I heard her bed creaking through the wall. I always knew when Marlene had walked by outside, because I heard her high heels clicking on the floor. I heard Sarah walking around in her room, singing Chinese songs. (I’ll never forget when Marlene suddenly started singing a song in Chinese; she had no idea what she was saying, she had just learned it from hearing Sarah sing it all the time.) I can only hope they all know that more than anything else – more than the the JM Barrie sites in London, the fabulous château at Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, and even the goat cheese – they are the first and biggest reason why I’m glad I came to France.

( Some Big Pictures of Us )

 

 

I remember how scared I was when I made my last entry in the United States back in September, before I came to France. I’m not going to say now that it was stupid, because even though there was nothing to be scared of, that was a very real fear. And I’m scared again now. Every time I turn on CNN International, there’s more gloomy news about the US economy, the loss of jobs, the shrinking dollar, the rising oil prices, the global flood crisis. I’m scared that soon I’ll become another overworked, underpaid American, in the country that doesn’t have good healthcare or public transportation or any of the other things they take for granted in France. I’m scared to think about my future. The only thing I can think to do is remind myself that when I came to France, I really had no idea what I was doing, but somehow, I made it work. I can only hope that I can do the same thing now that I’m going back to the United States.