I am now one-leg in two the final chapter of my French visit. A physical and mental exhaustion is kicking in now. There are times I feel that I need a break from the confinements of being French tongue-tied. The weather has been dominantly warm over the last couple of weeks since my arrival. Yet, there was this one night when I slept on top of my white sheets, window fully flung open and the fan buzzing the propellors at the max, a cold front seized upon us and I caught a cold by the next morning. My host mom did not have any cold medicine, she advised me to look for a pharmacy in town on my way to school. Unlike back home where pharmacies sell groceries and Grocers sell basic medication, in my city, there was no such fluidity. The pharmacies were not only hard to locate, they were also closed when I got there. This is when the lesson I had had on “French business affairs” kicked in; the business hours in France, particularly in my city, differ from those in the US. I was growing to be impatient because my cold seemed to be having the better part of me with time. I need some medicine, I needed some familiarity. I think I paved way for all the nostalgia I had been keeping away to come into my heart. I desperately missed my family and friends. I knew this moment would come, sooner or later. When it did, that prior expectation of its coming did not make the feelings less direct.
I was becoming overwhelmed with the cultural shock of Tours.
Me (left), My mère d’accueil (a.k.a host mom) and other hosted student
Luckily, I think my host mom sensed that I needed to be saved from sinking in the boat of nostalgia and she kicked n with her sweet gestures to remind me of why I need to keep my head up and enjoy France. She told about the other students she had hosted for the longest time had gone through similar phases. She continues to wave for me when I left the morning for school, she would routinely ask me about my day at school. She told me about her vacations to Japan and how she yearns to travel more but her age makes it hard for her to go through a lengthy plane right. I feel much better now because I found a pharmacy that had the right medicine, eventually. I explained to the pharmacist in French about my condition and was impressed my with my fluency, although it was clear I was not a French native.
At this stage of my trip, I have mixed feeling about departing France in just over a week’s time. I will miss my host mom, her dog Chippie, the dinners watching popular local game shows on TF1 and my calming jogs at nights around the community park. But I will not enjoy missing the train from school and having to walk home for 2 hours!
