Le Murier, Chassiers
The first night
Apparently, I’m scared of the countryside. No, it’s not quite that — I love exploring out on my own, I’ll walk until I get blisters, and I adore the peaceful quiet calm that surrounds you outside of the city. But when it gets dark, and I don’t know where I am or what the heck I’m doing wherever it is that I am, and the silence is deafening (not to mention the cricket choruses), and I don’t have a way to connect to the people who can give me encouraging words, and I’m living by myself for the first time ever, then I become a little disconcerted. At times like these, a rolling thunderstorm in the distance is a comfort. You thank any number of gods and holy beings for a DVD and a laptop (and realize you’ve been thinking so much in French that you can watch Amélie without subtitles and you do actually understand everything, even the parts of the movie you had forgotten). A piece of paper can hold your sanity together, if an organized to-do list is written on it. You put five songs on repeat out of your 8500-song library because they’re the only ones peaceful enough to calm your mind enough to fall asleep.
Exactly one week ago, I was talking to someone, explaining the task ahead of me and trying to reassure myself that I would be okay, and I said “Just watch — I’ll get really really lucky and I’ll have found a place to live by this time next week.” At that point, I thought it was a fool’s fantasy. I have rarely been so happy to be wrong.
A word of advice: if you ever go to a foreign country, or a new state — to live there — try to find at least one person within a 100-mile radius of your destination that you know. Somehow, make it happen. I cannot imagine what I would have done if the Grises weren’t waiting for me in Lyon.
(Last “old post.” I have internet now. HAHAHA! More on that later.)
Sunshine Abroad 