"Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey." - Tad Williams
So it's been a bit under a week since I returned to la France, though it feels like much longer. While I was back in California, I realized I had a new attitude, but it's almost like I was on vacation and now I'm just back in my normal life in Paris - it feels strange. It probably helped to have a host situation to come back to, as well as starting classes literally the day I returned. It's nice to know how comfortable I am living here, but it's also a bit disconcerting to think that Solana Beach no longer feels like "home". It's now become "visiting my parents and my old life" (though we do have a new canine family member, Charlie. Isn't he just the cutest?!?)
And then I visited Middlebury, which I had started to consider my home away from "home" by the end of last year. However, that didn't really feel like home either; I was just passing through, and when I return, it will only be for one or two semesters. No, Middlebury was always just a place I was passing through - it feels right when you're there, but it's not real life.
So that leaves me in a sort of dilemma, one I realize probably leads to so much of the angst present in our early 20's. Our schools are temporary because college won't last forever. Our home from high school becomes our parents' home and a constant reminder of our past (at least for me). We are left to float between locations, not sure whether we want to return to or leave either place.
And then where is studying abroad supposed to fit in? A semester, yes, it's quick. But a year? One's forced to establish a life, especially in a city like Paris - a bank account, a phone, a form of transportation, a coffee shop, a library, a gym. All of those things connect us to a place. Doing it ourselves makes it our own. It's that thrilling feeling of independence and freedom - setting up shop.
So somehow, Paris feels like home [cue tourist-y picture with Eiffel Tower]. Yet, it's so far separate from my 'normal' life that it's becoming harder and harder to reconcile the two. Being immersed in the language and the culture is what I wanted and it has been incredible - both exactly and not at all what I was expecting [cue picture of adorable host mom, her cousin/nephew/some-sort-of-relative who is a well established French actor and his partner, who is a dancer at the Opera]. But I find myself feeling distanced from how I defined myself before. I never thought actively about being américaine. I always preferred to say I was californienne, despite that being encore general. I find I've lost a bit of that identity; I wouldn't say it's a negative thing, just a thing. I will never be française, my blond hair has rendered that impossible. I feel less American too though. The identity seems so limiting and general now. Where does that leave me?
Today was Martin Luther King, Jr Day. I didn't know until this morning when I switched from the Europe version of the WSJ to the US one. I know more about international news than US national news. For example, President Obama's second inauguration was also this afternoon. I watched, I was moved, but I felt a bit detached from it. Hearing the commentary and translations in French made it seem like it wasn't really happening, or that it would affect me differently than other Americans. I didn't feel like I was necessarily one of "the people" included in Obama's "We".
Here I find myself: watching life go by in the US, a player in life in France, but certainly not fitting exactly into either. It leads me to ask, how exactly should I define 'home'? Is our 'home' then part of our identity? My passport says I'm from the USA, but should 'American' be part of my self-identity, an adjective I use to describe myself? And to what extent can I say that 'French' or 'European' has replaced part of the gap?
On a more general note, this semester is certainly going to be a bit different than last. First off, there are 45 or something semester students and we only lost 10 from last semester. Planning more trips (at this point: Nîmes this coming weekend, Chamonix the weekend after, Russia the end of February and Rome the end of March) and more exploration, so hopefully I'll be posting more pictures!
Check out my tumblr ( http://lovelylittlelivi.tumblr.com/ ) for more updates; I post much more often on there, since the posts are shorter and it's much easier to post pictures :)
All my love, milles bisous <3
