lessons of frace: part 1

Last Friday was my last day of school and my first afternoon of vacation and as much as I’m glad to be done with some of my kiddies, I’m really sad to be finished. Partially because that means my time in France is coming to an end, and partially because now I must start the job search (or rather I should have, but I’ve figured I have Challenger/Stratford to fall back on).

And so, like all experiences, one must be able to come out of it with something learned. After seven months here surely I’ve learned many things. They say you should learn a new thing every day. So technically I should have learned at least two hundred and twenty-eight things by the time I leave.


Lesson #1: Relationships NEED time and effort, and most importantly communication.
I feel like I should have known this by now, but with an ocean, a continent, and nine time zones apart, it’s easy to let relationships falter. Even with the aid of the internet and Skype, it seems that it would be easier to make long distances not feel so far. Skype and even Google now had video chats (though if the other person has no camera it defeats the purpose of video chats versus just a phone call). And yet, it really is the time zones that make talking to someone overseas hard. My evenings are their mornings, their evenings my mornings. And so encounters, or long conversations just become harder and harder. And as much time as I spend on my computer, I am really a person who thrives on social encounters, coffee dates, meetings around food, meetings around activities.

And so I’ve learned, with long distance relationships, friendship or otherwise, one really must put a lot more effort into conversations, face time (or voice time in cameraless cases), emails, and just thoughts about the other person. With coming here, I had a sense of selfishness with me where I wanted to see all I could but wanted to do things on my time. And well, one learns that the world doesn’t always work with you. Time schedules, time zones, time fleeting… time sometimes just isn’t on your side.