9 months, 10 countries, 44 cities
Well, this is the end... I'm back in Nantes now for a few days with my family (hooray!), and we will be leaving for the Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday afternoon to fly out Saturday morning (boo!). While I know I'll be melancholy on Friday and Saturday and again in a couple of weeks when I fully realize that I won't be coming back to France for perhaps several years, I must say that I am very much looking forward to returning home and spending the summer in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with my family and Kris. Adventures in Washington, Colorado, and California are already being planned before I move to Denver in mid-August.
In the meantime, I have nine months of incredible, life-altering, uplifting, and sometimes extremely challenging moments to look back on. In nine months, Nantes became my home and I was able to visit over forty cities in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Turkey - ten different countries in all. I cannot express my gratitude to the forces of the universe for all of the opportunities I've had to travel and to learn about other people, other places, and about myself, to improve my French and to better understand France and its history and culture. I have made new friends and contacts, reaffirmed existing ties and relationships, and begun to understand things about myself as a fully-fledging adult that I hadn't seen or been aware of before.
To any young person reading this, please please please spend time abroad. Study abroad in college is a fantastic start, but I highly encourage everyone in their early twenties to try to spend a significant amount of time on their own working in another country. Every aspect, every challenge, and every success, great and small, will change you, and will change you for the better. The experiences and memories I've gained from this year will stay with me throughout my life and career and will affect how I raise my future family.
The song "I Lived" by OneRepublic has been stuck in my head the past couple of weeks because the lyrics really remind me that life is meant to be lived to the fullest, no matter who you are or where you are. The small, beautiful, simple moments that occur every day are our constant reminders to never waste a day. Hopefully, in the end, we can all say:
"I, I did it all.
I, I did it all.
I owned every second that this world could give,
I saw so many places, the things that I did,
Yeah, with every broken bone,
I swear, I lived."
During my first couple of weeks back in the States, I'm looking forward to filling in the blog with plenty of photos and stories from Spain, Belgium, Turkey, and my last weeks in France.
In the meantime, I have nine months of incredible, life-altering, uplifting, and sometimes extremely challenging moments to look back on. In nine months, Nantes became my home and I was able to visit over forty cities in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Turkey - ten different countries in all. I cannot express my gratitude to the forces of the universe for all of the opportunities I've had to travel and to learn about other people, other places, and about myself, to improve my French and to better understand France and its history and culture. I have made new friends and contacts, reaffirmed existing ties and relationships, and begun to understand things about myself as a fully-fledging adult that I hadn't seen or been aware of before.
To any young person reading this, please please please spend time abroad. Study abroad in college is a fantastic start, but I highly encourage everyone in their early twenties to try to spend a significant amount of time on their own working in another country. Every aspect, every challenge, and every success, great and small, will change you, and will change you for the better. The experiences and memories I've gained from this year will stay with me throughout my life and career and will affect how I raise my future family.
The song "I Lived" by OneRepublic has been stuck in my head the past couple of weeks because the lyrics really remind me that life is meant to be lived to the fullest, no matter who you are or where you are. The small, beautiful, simple moments that occur every day are our constant reminders to never waste a day. Hopefully, in the end, we can all say:
"I, I did it all.
I, I did it all.
I owned every second that this world could give,
I saw so many places, the things that I did,
Yeah, with every broken bone,
I swear, I lived."
During my first couple of weeks back in the States, I'm looking forward to filling in the blog with plenty of photos and stories from Spain, Belgium, Turkey, and my last weeks in France.
Signing off from France (for now). See you soon, America.
Can't wait to see you!
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