I've been back in the States for a week and a half and I'm happy to be home. France was fantastic, but home is... well, home is home. My language prof prepped us for reverse culture shock, which definitely occured, but not quite to the extent that she described.
That said, the first time I went to an American restaurant, I nearly ordered in French.
Luckily I had just enough presence of mind to stop myself before I opened my mouth.
I did not however have the presence of mind the following day to remember that I was in America:
(in conversation)
"My dad gets back to America a day or two after I do"
"So...tomorrow?"
"Oh... right... I'm already in America, aren't I..."
After a couple of days I was functioning like a normal person again, more or less.
A few highlights from the long journey home:
Notre Dame hired a bus to drive us from Angers directly to Charles de Gaulle, leaving at 2:30 in the morning. This worked out well enough because I spent the day shopping and wandering the city and then I finished packing my bags at night. Angers is split in half by a river, and go figure, my last day in town was the first day I crossed the river. The edge of the river was very pretty and I passed some interesting shops, but I hadn't missed out on too much. I ate dinner with Isabel at a nice, classic French restaurant at Place du Ralliment in the center of town. Ralliment isn't much to look at these days, it's home to a beautiful theater, but the square itself is full of construction. However, it's lined with some of the best restaurants in Angers, and we returned to one we had visited earlier in the semester. I ordered a salad with cheese, tomato, oranges, toast, and duck pate; sounds a bit odd, yes, but it looked and tasted wonderful.
After dinner, I walked home and packed my bags; I finished a little after 1am, the same time my host mom came out of her room to check on me. She had taken an hour-long nap so she could be awake to say goodbye. We had a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen and reflected over the semester. Around 1:45 I ran back upstairs to grab my computer and I was ready to go. My friend Thomas had scheduled a taxi to pick him up at his house at 1:45 and then stop by my house right afterward, as he lived close by; keep in mind the bus was scheduled to leave at 2:30. Around 2am I got a call from Thomas that the taxi hadn't arrived yet. He'd called 4 times, but couldn't get through. He asked me if my host mom could drive, so I told him I would ask and call him back. I explained the situation to my host mom who promptly took control and phoned another taxi company. But we couldn't get through either! After about 3 more attempts, we finally got a hold of someone and had a taxi standing by if we needed it. I called Thomas back at 2:10, the original taxi had just arrived at his house. So we waited. Around 2:15 the taxi drove past my house to the end of the street. I walked outside, assuming Thomas had forgotten where my house was and I see Thomas running like a mad man from the end of the block telling me to get my bags because the taxi refused to back up. Madame Laporte, Thomas, and I threw my bags into the street and I said a quick goodbye to Madame, thanking her profusely for everything. As I turned around, the taxi driver had finally decided to back his car up to my front door. When he got out of the car to open the trunk he started complaining about how much luggage I had (Thomas had warned him, plus I think two and a half suitcases is perfectly reasonable for four months). However, the guys got the luggage in the trunk, I lept in the car, and we were on our way. The taxi driver continued to complain the whole ride, first about the construction that had consumed Angers, then about the luggage, then because Thomas mentioned that the bus was supposed to leave very soon. And on top of his poor social skills, the also had limited driving skills. It was raining so the streets we slick and dark as we sped through narrow and winding roads, only speeding up at sharp turns. I was holding onto Thomas for dear life because I couldn't find my seat belt. But at least we made it to the bus on time. The meter on the dashboard read 11.50, the price we owed, but as we got out of the car, the taxi driver informed us that we owed him AT LEAST 12 euros because he was given the wrong address and was forced to back up, a grave inconvenience that had caused the meter to misread the distance. Thomas gave him 12 euros, but he looked at the money and then looked at us and began to complain that it wasn't enough. Thomas claimed that was all he had (which was mostly true), and the cranky taxi driver left, muttering complaints of mistreatment. Thomas called him a vampire.
So that was the taxi driver.
We said our goodbyes to host families, friends, and professors before heading out of Angers plane-ward bound. I slept a bit on the ride, but this was difficult as out of the 12 of the students on the bus, probably half were drunk, and some were quite loud for the first hour or two. I can't imagine the bus driver was our biggest fan, especially when we insisted on belting the American National Anthem as we left Angers. We did settle down about half way there and most of us slept. However, when we arrived at the airport, the bus driver made one stop only because Charles de Gaulle is a difficult and confusing to navigate, or so he claimed. This one stop was very convenient for one of us, but the other 11 had to haul four months worth of clothes and souveniers across the concrete wilderness that is the second terminal of Charles de Gaulle on little to no sleep, and for a few unlicky souls, hungover. Exhausted though we were, we did make it through the security and to the gate with time to spare.
From the moment I was on the plane, lively American chatter buzzed all around me; the air stewards were pleasant, smiley, and very chatty; and before the plane took off I switched seats with a woman sporting bright purple hair so that she could sit by her friend in leopard print pants.
Home sweet home.
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