39 Day Until Home
Status entry.
12.11.2011
The title of this entry pretty much says it all. The days passed since my last entry on the 12 days of traveling have been more about simple living here, cultural experiences here in Dijon, and what's left to accomplish before going home in a mere 39 days (yes, I'm counting down.).
I know this may sound crazy to some, but it's been a nice change to be in Dijon for a bit and not travel for a few weeks. It's a bit like the things I learned when I was out playing music professionally in Colorado for the last two years prior to Vail, I didn't really understand what it was like to be playing shows all over the place every weekend all over the state and meeting tons of people and seeing tons of crazy stuff. It gave me a whole new respect for those people who are lucky enough to be out on tour and what they go through. Traveling has been kind of the same way: you put it on this high platform and idealize how awesome it must be to travel to all these awesome and crazy foreign places and cultures, and believe me, it is awesome, but it can drag sometimes too. It gets to the point of not knowing where you're going next, you get tired of having to unpack and repack your stuff, and traveling, like playing 10 shows a month, is harder on your body than you think. I got sick part way through the trip with a cold and cough of some kind, and the cough is still lingering weeks later, so it's been nice to chill and relax in Dijon for a couple weeks. I have nothing formally planned before going home other than when my family arrives when I'll be able to spend about a week with them. I'm still trying to figure out when I'll be making a trip to Chamonix and when I'll be making some European turns before going home, and there are a couple other trip ideas in there too like Scandinavia, Morocco with friends, Normandy, and so on. But money is becoming tighter and the days left here are limited, so I'm not sure how much traveling I'll actually do.
Spending the past couple weeks in Dijon have allowed me to rest up and recover, but more than that, I've actually had schoolwork to do. Imagine that, for the first time since finals ended in June at DU, I've had to do work. I can't say I've learned too much over here, as I've learned more from walking in other cultures traveling than I have in the classrooms at ESC, but it's been enjoyable. I wrote a 10 page global marketing paper recently on advising a luxury brand in the ski industry on market entry into Argentina, which was awesome. Any time I can incorporate mountains and skiing into school work it's a plus. I'm giving a presentation this week in French class on my city of Denver also, and as the only American in the class, I'm pretty excited about that. I'm proud to call myself a Coloradoan over here and proud to represent the United States. I've learned a lot of interesting things about the United States from living outside of the country, but I'm nonetheless proud to call it home. I'm finally starting to have some other projects due as well for international management and multinational finance, but the level of workload for those courses is incredibly low, so it's been pretty simple to keep up.
Living in Dijon the last couple weeks has opened me up to some new cultural experiences as well, for better or for worse, which has helped me along in the journal I have to keep for my French culture class on the differences between US and French culture. Writing that journal has taught me how much better my French has gotten over here too, it's pretty incredible to growth that has happened. I can now whip out a French paper like it's nothing with only a few errors. It makes me wish I had the opportunity to live in Italy for a few months too so that I could polish up my Italian too. Maybe someday... The diary of differences in cultural is pretty interesting though, and it makes me appreciate the culture that I get to live in. I've also learned how bad the weather is in some places of the world. I saw the sun in Dijon today for the first time in days, maybe a week, so I can't wait to get home to my Colorado sun again, even if it is only 10 degrees outside when sunny.
I've also since the last entry started a countdown to homebound. I've enjoyed traveling and living here, but with money running out and ski season starting in Colorado, I'm ready to head home. I've started to miss my friends and family a lot lately too. I can't wait for a real bed again either! While I seem to have found a solution for the supposed beg bud problem here, sleeping in 3 layers of clothes every night isn't exactly the most enjoyable thing in the world, so I'm looking forward to coming home. And the mattress here is a brick of foam, so it's not even a real mattress. The housing drama continues to create issues, but I think things may be coming close to an end because I consulted the legal adviser at the university this week who confirmed my case for me that a contract agreement was made between myself and the residence and that they can't request more because of that. I'm anxious to hear the response from the residence to that response by me this week, but hopefully that settles it because I have now proven them wrong by law. I can't believe I've had to take this issue to this level by myself, but hopefully this resolves it. I still need to complete the OFII form with the office of immigration that has to be completed within 3 months of arrival since I'm nearing that point, but once that's out of the way, I'll be counting down the last few weeks until home.
Sorry for such a boring and uninteresting blog entry, hopefully the next one will be full of photos and 360s from Paris or wherever my travels and life takes me over here!
Posted by la vita bella 12:29 Archived in France