it's august

twenty five days.

25 days left until I'm on that plane. 12 days left of work. We're getting to crunch time.

How is it that my summer has gone in slow motion but at superspeed? I'm losing track of time. Losing direction. It doesn't feel real. When I think of myself in the near future I imagine the familiar: BG's campus, my friends, a couch and some snacks at 2am on a thursday. I really don't know how the transition to France will go.

I'm not scared, not yet at least. But I am wondering what my life will look like in the coming months. I don't even know what classes I'll be taking, I don't get to choose until I get there. There's also a shit ton of paperwork that I don't have all the answers for. If you're reading this French bureaucracy- you can suck an egg.

But in situations of uncertainty, I have to remember to trust myself. I've gotten this far, and I will go further. This summer has introduced an era of newfound self-confidence. I've started to love my body, and not just the parts that others have deemed attractive. I'm genuinely starting to love the pieces of myself that I used to condemn (here's looking at you, love handles). It's been an ongoing process- and I had to be taught how to love myself first by others. I've also started to chip away at the things in my life that only bring negative energy.

Negative people were first to go. Negative habits are in the works, and soon I'll be on track to eliminate the negative parts of my academic career: I'm changing majors. I've decided that teaching isn't the route I want to take. Maybe someday I'll renew the fire that used to burn in my belly for leading a classroom, but I think that my passion for education is going to take me in a different direction. So I'm switching to a major in French instead of French Education, and I'm adding a linguistics minor. With this change I'm hoping to open myself to different career opportunities and to broaden my studies. Being an education major had me feeling boxed in, and while I will always defend the field of language education and the determination it requires to be a teacher I just don't think that's what the universe has in store for me.

This has turned into ramblings about my life, I imagine this space will be a lot more exciting when I'm actually abroad. So stay tuned, if you're reading. I can't promise to be less frazzled, but I can definitely promise to be more entertaining.