Parting is such sweet sorrow -

Somehow it is already that time. I would like to believe that someone has just been stealing pages from my calendar and it's really only January and not halfway through May. On August 31st I believed that nine months was going to feel like forever, and that I would never actually make it back home. Now, on May 16th, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of time and leaving Chambéry is something that I'm finding very hard to do.

I've never lived anywhere other than home for any period of time. Sure, I've lived on campus, but that was a 30 minute drive to my house and inaccessible during the holidays. I've never lived somewhere on my own like this before. Chambéry is the only other place that I have ever been able to call home. I keep getting really bummed out that I'm leaving, but then I remember that everything that makes this place home will be gone too. All my friends are leaving and without them, it's just like starting over somewhere new. But that still doesn't make it any easier to give all this up.

Lemon tarts, Moroccan pizza, caramel ice cream, raspberry macarons, speculoos everything, fondu, and all things French. Just a few of the things that I'm leaving behind and am unsure of when I will return to.

I'm all packed up now and I'm laying in an empty room, my empty room in Comte Vert B14D, for the last time. Tomorrow I will be checking out of my room, going to the post office to ship some things home, and then going to the Challes-les-eaux train station for the last time. I'll get in Paris tomorrow afternoon and I'll spend my day cramming every last minute souvenir shopping and sightseeing that I can, and then I'll be heading to the airport and crashing there until my plane leaves on Tuesday to take me back to the good ole U.S. of A.

Bittersweet has never more appropriately described my life. Maybe when I get home I'll write a whole blog about my reverse culture shock. I already feel it.

Thank you Chambéry, thank you France, thank you all who have been a part of this experience. It was absolutely worth it.