I recently arrived to a French-Italian border city in the South of France (Provence) on the Mediterranean Sea. This is where I will be beginning and living the next 5 months of my life. It's not a shabby-looking place at all - in fact it's beautiful, albeit quite a bit colder than expected. I think that things will work out well for me here. After all, even if they don't, it's just 5 small months.
Since I am an exchange student here, my workload is very small. Moreover, since I will be experiencing so many new things, it would make sense for me to get back to blogging to document them. I think that my life in Vancouver bored me out and that is why the blogging stopped - things weren't special anymore. But, everything here is new and special and therefore worth mentioning. I have decided to dedicate a lot of this blog's next half a year -in fact, probably all of it- to describing and explaining my time here. Before I begin, a thanks to Nima for actually encouraging this and reminding me of my duty to entertain the small masses that read my blog with the trials and tribulations of my existence.
I would explain my reasons for being on exchange first, but that would take up a great many paragraphs and no one would want to bother themselves with that pathetic-ness, so let's skip that and go straight into the physical departure:
I embarked on my journey from Vancouver with my mom, who I had hoped would be helpful in bypassing the obviously nasty French bureaucracy. I wanted her to help get me settled in my first life alone, and all that other stuff that one would want their mother there for. We planned to spend 3 days in Paris first before heading down to Menton, and so we did.
Paris was not enjoyed by me. First of all, I was jet-lagged. Second, I was sad to have left my friends and family behind. Third, Paris is not a nice place. It's dirty, overrated, arrogant and not so special. I will say that Paris does offer one good thing and that is a motorized scooter service, which one can use to travel from place to place. It is the most fun and handy thing I have ever seen. I rode around the city on my scooter for a long time and it was extremely pleasant. The food in Paris was also nothing to write home about, and therefore I won't be writing out loud about it.
After 3 days of my mother's elation, we made our way down to Nice. Here, we spent about a week together. My mom was very chatty and remarkably happy the entire time, and it made me feel almost as though she was rubbing in how shitty I felt. I know that she wasn't, but I couldn't help feeling that way. I deeply missed my cat, and things we're not going well for me at all. I was sensing a deep coming dread.
On that note, let me explain what has been happening with me for about the past 6 months. I have been experiencing radical emotions. When I am happy, I am euphoric; when I am sad, I am terribly sad. The same principle has applied to my relations with other people - when I like someone, I love them; when I don't, I hate them. The emotions have been fast and strong, and I have felt completely taken by them. It is unfortunate because I am generally such a rational person, who thinks things through, sometimes even too much. No longer do I think anything through - I just go with what I feel. I hope that this will change and that things will go back to normal soon. Frankly, I don't know if it is possible to live life like this. To put things simply: I have been living off vibes for the past six months.
Do you know what that's like for me?
I have been in love 20 times. I have fallen out of love just as many. There is no stability in that.
My emotional rollercoaster has followed me since the start of last semester. It started with smaller things, but gradually progressed to bigger ones. The first thing that comes to mind is the friendship that I started with a guy I met in my Italian class over cookies. I had made cookies for my class as part of a presentation. These cookies were tasted by the class and received generally positive reviews. A Greek guy who I barely knew up until then commented on my cookies after I finished my presentation to say that they were amazing. Not just ok, or good, or fine, but amazing. His eyes were wide as he told me about them and he looked remarkably genuine. Many people told me that they were solid cookies, but none sparked the same endearing honesty that I felt radiating from him. It was childlike. That, paired with the fact that he had a typically pleasant Greek face, sparked a immense feeling of joy in me.
I spoke with him after class and realized that he had been living off of chicken nuggets for the past few months since coming to university, so that explained why even my mediocre cookies inspired him so much, but that's beside the point. As I spoke to him, I felt a huge degree of genuine happiness come from within him. It felt so good to walk with someone so happy. We spoke and got on really well, and fairly quickly I was deeply taken by him. Before you get the wrong idea: no, not at all romantically. It's a feeling that I can't even explain. I felt a culmination of many different types of love and admiration for him. I wished all good things to come his way. I can't explain it in words.
Since I am an exchange student here, my workload is very small. Moreover, since I will be experiencing so many new things, it would make sense for me to get back to blogging to document them. I think that my life in Vancouver bored me out and that is why the blogging stopped - things weren't special anymore. But, everything here is new and special and therefore worth mentioning. I have decided to dedicate a lot of this blog's next half a year -in fact, probably all of it- to describing and explaining my time here. Before I begin, a thanks to Nima for actually encouraging this and reminding me of my duty to entertain the small masses that read my blog with the trials and tribulations of my existence.
I would explain my reasons for being on exchange first, but that would take up a great many paragraphs and no one would want to bother themselves with that pathetic-ness, so let's skip that and go straight into the physical departure:
I embarked on my journey from Vancouver with my mom, who I had hoped would be helpful in bypassing the obviously nasty French bureaucracy. I wanted her to help get me settled in my first life alone, and all that other stuff that one would want their mother there for. We planned to spend 3 days in Paris first before heading down to Menton, and so we did.
Paris was not enjoyed by me. First of all, I was jet-lagged. Second, I was sad to have left my friends and family behind. Third, Paris is not a nice place. It's dirty, overrated, arrogant and not so special. I will say that Paris does offer one good thing and that is a motorized scooter service, which one can use to travel from place to place. It is the most fun and handy thing I have ever seen. I rode around the city on my scooter for a long time and it was extremely pleasant. The food in Paris was also nothing to write home about, and therefore I won't be writing out loud about it.
After 3 days of my mother's elation, we made our way down to Nice. Here, we spent about a week together. My mom was very chatty and remarkably happy the entire time, and it made me feel almost as though she was rubbing in how shitty I felt. I know that she wasn't, but I couldn't help feeling that way. I deeply missed my cat, and things we're not going well for me at all. I was sensing a deep coming dread.
On that note, let me explain what has been happening with me for about the past 6 months. I have been experiencing radical emotions. When I am happy, I am euphoric; when I am sad, I am terribly sad. The same principle has applied to my relations with other people - when I like someone, I love them; when I don't, I hate them. The emotions have been fast and strong, and I have felt completely taken by them. It is unfortunate because I am generally such a rational person, who thinks things through, sometimes even too much. No longer do I think anything through - I just go with what I feel. I hope that this will change and that things will go back to normal soon. Frankly, I don't know if it is possible to live life like this. To put things simply: I have been living off vibes for the past six months.
Do you know what that's like for me?
I have been in love 20 times. I have fallen out of love just as many. There is no stability in that.
My emotional rollercoaster has followed me since the start of last semester. It started with smaller things, but gradually progressed to bigger ones. The first thing that comes to mind is the friendship that I started with a guy I met in my Italian class over cookies. I had made cookies for my class as part of a presentation. These cookies were tasted by the class and received generally positive reviews. A Greek guy who I barely knew up until then commented on my cookies after I finished my presentation to say that they were amazing. Not just ok, or good, or fine, but amazing. His eyes were wide as he told me about them and he looked remarkably genuine. Many people told me that they were solid cookies, but none sparked the same endearing honesty that I felt radiating from him. It was childlike. That, paired with the fact that he had a typically pleasant Greek face, sparked a immense feeling of joy in me.
I spoke with him after class and realized that he had been living off of chicken nuggets for the past few months since coming to university, so that explained why even my mediocre cookies inspired him so much, but that's beside the point. As I spoke to him, I felt a huge degree of genuine happiness come from within him. It felt so good to walk with someone so happy. We spoke and got on really well, and fairly quickly I was deeply taken by him. Before you get the wrong idea: no, not at all romantically. It's a feeling that I can't even explain. I felt a culmination of many different types of love and admiration for him. I wished all good things to come his way. I can't explain it in words.
