Au revoir

As I type this I'm sitting at Parc Paul Mistral, watching French hippies stand in a circle with their shirts off, rhythmically banging away on drums and quietly chanting while their friends in dreadlocks juggle nearby. I'd almost think I was back in Arcata or Santa Cruz again, except for the fact that 100 feet away are three disapproving French ladies in their troisième âge (twa-zee-ehm ahj: senior citizens) with perfectly coiffed hair and bundled in sweaters (keep in mind it's practically 90 degrees out today), shooting these hippies judgmental glances and gossiping behind cupped hands, while an equally old-aged Frenchman in dress shirt and khakis tries to dance to the music. And on the bench next to them is a girl no less than six months pregnant,simultaneously rubbing her belly with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other while she giggles with her husband and watches three labs run around the grass, chasing after a toddler. Oh, only in France...

This is what my life in Grenoble has come down to: watching hippie ladies, old ladies, and pregnant ladies sit together in the park while they gossip, smoke, and giggle. And it's all about to come to an end. Tomorrow is Monday, which marks the first day of my last week of work. This week will be full of au revoirs (ohr vwa: goodbyes), but it won't be melancholy. I'm ready to move on. In fact, in French there are many ways to say goodbye, but most of them all mean “until the next time”, which sort of takes the sting out of the sentiment. Au revoir directly translated really just means “until the next sighting”. A bientot (ah bee-en-toe), another casual way of saying goodbye, really translates to “see you very soon”, and a tout a l'heure (ah toot ah loor) implies “until the next hour we see each other again”. So what do the French say if they never intend on seeing someone again? Adieu (ah-deeu), which means “to God”. This very formal word for goodbye is best reserved for a French person if they think they're about to die, or secretly hope that the person they're saying goodbye to is about to die and be sent up “to God”.

A bit like the French, I like to think of goodbyes not so much as a parting forever, but the chance to say bonjour (hello) to someone else. Sure, I'll be saying my goodbyes to my students this week, but I'll be saying hello to Andrew on Friday for the first time in months. I might be saying goodbye to my apartment at the end of May, but I'll be saying hello to my home in Boulder Creek for the first time since September, where my family and animals will be waiting for me. And I might be saying goodbye to Grenoble and all the friends I've met here, but I'll be saying hello to a new region of France in October.

That's right: on April 7^th, 2010, I received an email from the English Teaching Assistantship program in France informing me that I'd been offered a teaching assistantship position in the region of Versailles—a suburb of Paris. Knowing that I have a place in France waiting for me--giving me another year of trying hopelessly to seem French--means leaving Grenoble is not sad but just a necessary step towards more adventure, and I couldn't be more ready. Even though I've been spoiled with six weeks of vacation in the past seven months, I'm exhausted. Nothing about Grenoble has been easy, but rather one long lesson that has taught me that chasing after my rêves (rehv: dreams) is a whole lot of hard work, mixed in with a few sunny days in a park listening to hippies butcher the drum...and a lot of other nice moments too.