it's not really over.

today was the last day of class. i feel like i should be sad but i'm not, even though i had an amazing semester. i just think everything is good in its time really. i had an amazing language professor, i wish she was my aunt really. my classmates and i bought her a plant and a little card. she really liked it and went around the room giving "bisous". when i asked to take a photo with her, she pulled me really close so our faces are touching in the photo and then we said our little goodbyes. it was really cute. i think she liked me. i was always laughing in class (imagine that), and she would always say haha, alyssa your laugh is extraordinary, you have a very characteristic laugh!

there were a lot of dynamics going on with all of the foreign students and their responses to questions in french that you actually could tell a lot about a person. for example, today we had to pick out which family structure you liked the best and why (traditional, where mom stays home and dad goes to work, or hippy family that is always outdoors and surrounded by friends and family and listening to music, or childless couple that have good jobs and busy lives). just for reference i choose the hippy family. haha.

*goodbyes are weird. i think everything should end the day before it is supposed to so that you don't have to think about it as in-depth. because while parting, if you knew you were going to see someone tomorrow it's just "see you" but if you don't know when you will see someone again, you have to think about all they ever meant to you and it forces you to become too sentimental, when really some people in our lives are just instrumental (not to say they can't influence you are make an impact on your life) i just think back to jr. high when all of the girls cried on the last day of 8th grade. some people were moving away, others would change, etc. but the reality of it is that at the end of the summer they most likely won't even remember some of the friends they hung out with because it's jr. high! and you can be thankful for what someone was to you, but if you grip everything that comes your way, you might ruin the nature of what it is. For example, there is a teacher from high school that influenced me a lot, and i respect him. at graduations i go to at my old high school i talk to him and update him, and that works. but if i wanted to become friends with him, that would be weird, and not an acceptable friendship. another example, i make friends with a girl studying abroad and although i meet them and get to know them in class a little-- i don't have a lot in common with them. and you get to a point where it can't go any further because you truly don't have deep things you agree on. but maybe that's the beauty of these encounters... to talk to people you normally wouldn't, to be displaced so that you learn that the world is much bigger than you think, and to question what you believe and how you fit into the world. it is beautiful but it isn't always easy when you know you have a life somewhere else.