Since this is my last post, I want to take stock of my experience here. You probably want to know the result of two years and a half spent as a Frenchie in the US. Well, the answer stands in one word … memories. Although not all of them are good, they all definitely contributed to make me grow up. I still have more than a year to spend here and I can’t wait to see what the future holds. Yet, I already know what I will miss the most when I’ll go back to France.
It won’t be the country itself, it won’t be its food, it won’t be this university … It will be the people. My classmates, my teachers, my coaches, my teammates of course but also each and everyone of the people working on and around campus. You don’t forget that easy people you get to see everyday for four years.
Plus, although they are very different from me, I have to confess that I will miss the Americans in general … Their kindness, their extrovert dimension, their craziness sometimes. You don’t see people going to class with sport pants on back home. You don’t see students coming to the cafeteria with their sleepers on either. And you don’t see students coming to class completely relax 15 minutes after the class had begun. I will miss those Louisiana students too, stuck at their phone walking around campus with a fish on the back of their shirt, sunglasses hanging around their neck, and flashy Nike shoes covering their feet. I will miss all of them. I may have a smile when I think about them but this smile is already a nostalgic one. Yes, we are different, Americans students act differently than French students in and outside of class but this difference is not a sick but a gift. A cultural gift.
