The End of November

Posted by Aaron in Journal

I can’t believe that it’s already the end of November!  Time flies when you’re having fun!  I’m a bit depressed that it’s already been three months that have passed, but I am cheered up by the fact that I get to live what I just lived two more times.  In other words, I just lived three months in France.  I have around seven months left here, so I am going to live two more three-month periods.  That’s actually a really long time!  When I think about how much I’ve done and learned in just three months, it makes me excited to think of what I will have done and learned by the end of the year.  I can already communicate well-enough (in my opinion) in French.  Imagine how I will be able to speak at the end of year!  Maybe I’ll finally be able to fully understand movies in French (I can understand most of them, it’s just exhausting having to think about what they’re saying instead of just understand what they’re saying, as I do in English).

Someone asked me the other day if anyone in my family speaks French.  As I was reflecting on this question, it occurred to me how weird it’s going to be that my parents speak English and Spanish, yet I speak English and French.  When it’s said like that, it doesn’t make much sense.  But when you hear the explanation—Spanish is the second language of my parents, so they only speak English at home.  Therefore, I only learned English at home.  And I lived a year in France, therefore I speak French whereas my parents never lived in France nor have they studied French, so they don’t speak French—it makes more sense.  It’s still odd though.

Monday, I’m going to be an English assistant for an English teacher at my high school here.  I’m excited!  Before I came to France, I realized that I might want to teach English in France.  As I’ve been living here in France and pondering on this idea, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that that is what I want to do.  I see my English teachers teaching here and it looks like something it’d really enjoy doing!  It would be a way that I can speak both English and French everyday for the rest of my life!  And if I raise my kids here in France, I would only speak English to them at home.  They’ll learn French at school and just in everyday life, but English is clearly not that easy to learn in France just living day-to-day.  So they’d be immediately fluent in two languages: one of them being the most important language in the world right now and the other language being one of the most beautiful and THE most classy language in the world.  :)

Next year, I REALLY hope that my family and I can host another exchange student!  Preferably, a French exchange student.  I want to “give back” to the universe all the help that French people have given me.  People might think that I want to host a French student so that I can continue to speak French when I’m back in America.  That is not the case.  I want to be able to help him or her with American/English expressions, vocabulary, “we don’t say it this way, but that way” instances, etc…  It’d be a way of me being an English teacher to a French person before I even leave high school!  I can’t imagine anything better than that for next year!

I talked about this with the director of the Houston Rotary Youth Exchange, and he told me that hosting another exchange student would be my mission.  In order for me to host again next year, I’d have to find another host family and have them commit to hosting and then present us two host families to the Richmond Rotary Club.  And if they accept sponsoring another exchange student, that means that RYE Houston can send another American exchange student abroad.  When Alan, the director, told me that, I took this mission personally.  I though about last year when I was applying to be an exchange student and how eager I was to be accept into the program.  And to think that if I hadn’t been accepted when I might have had a chance if a host club had decided to host an incoming exchange student.  I might be able to make a difference to an American exchange student like me!  So I am working as hard as I can all the way here in France to find people in Texas to host.  This isn’t the easiest job, as you can imagine, but it is a personal mission of mine that I WILL accomplish.  The summer when I was being home schooled, I was having a lot of trouble learning French and understanding it, which really depressed me because I wanted learn how to speak it and succeed in this subject!  So one night, I prayed to God to help me become fluent in French in whatever way possible.  Look at where I am now…

And as for the second year after my return to Texas, which will be my senior year of high school, I have my fingers crossed that my best friend from high school here in France, Ben, can be an exchange student and come to Texas.  He has been such a good friend since I’ve arrived here.  I mentioned the idea of him being an exchange student in Texas when I go back, and the idea highly interested him.  Unfortunately, he can’t go next year because it’s too late to apply.  So hopefully he can go the year after, which will be my senior year of high school.