Somehow it's October now, which means that I've been living in Toulouse for a little over a month. I find that at the one-month mark of living in a new place, I feel "provisionally settled"- it is clear that I am still finding my way, but the form of my life has started to take shape, its edges more defined.
It's interesting for me to compare those first days to life now. In all honesty, my first day in Toulouse was one of the worst first days I've had anywhere. I remember flying into Toulouse at sunrise and looking at the French countryside below, green and golden in the light, and feeling panic rise in my chest. Don't think, I told myself, the flight map stretching behind me in my mind. The reality of moving to a new country was too big to comprehend, so I resolved not to do it, not yet, anyways.
Our plane was one of the first to arrive that morning, so it was only our flight at customs. In my mind I rehearsed some French words I knew, in case someone asked, not quite sure if these were correct phrases, but I strung them together anyways. When I got there no one asked to see my student visa. A customs agent just stamped my passport and said <<bon journee>> and I went on my way.
I'd been anxious about moving all my bags by myself, especially if there were no elevators at my new apartment building. My mom told me she was praying for angels to help me move, and those angels came in the form of a new friend and her brother, who had a car and offered to pick me up at the airport on their way into the city. Sweaty from nearly 24 hours of travel, exhausted from a mostly-sleepless flight, all I wanted to do was go home, shower, and sleep. But it was such a blessing to meet someone from my master's program and to have someone else to share the wildness of that first day (and week and month).
We drove to campus and checked into our residence. Everyone around me was switching from French to English and back in a blink of an eye, and I was so tired that I could barely even follow the English. The campus was smaller than I had thought, and the white of the buildings, which had seemed so much to gleam in the pictures on the website, was blinding and concrete in the summer sunlight. It was further from the city center than I had thought - gone were my dreams of walking to a bakery in the morning or getting a coffee at the cute cafe next door. It was so different than it had seemed online that I felt that I had been tricked.
When I stepped into my room, my heart sank. It was an issue of perspective, really, because my room is actually a good size. But prior to coming to France I had visited my best friend in her big-girl apartment where she's living for her big-girl job, and as I looked around at my little student dorm, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I was happy with the twin bed and all the storage space, but my new bathroom was what made me want to cry. It had no shelf space whatsoever, but the worst bit was that the shower was like nothing I'd ever seen - the drain was under the toilet, so it seemed that when the shower was on, the entire bathroom floor could get wet.
At this point it was almost two. We went to lunch at an Asian buffet and I found myself eating buffet sushi that made me feel incredibly sick (not commenting on the quality, just that after 24 hours of travel, buffet sushi was not the best thing to put in my body). We went to a shop to buy household things - toilet paper, dishes, a kettle, all that. Making decisions at that point was just Not It, but I did my best and then begged to go back home. Once in my room, I double-locked the door, set down my shopping bag with all my still-packed suitcases, and started crying. I knew I was just tired, that these emotions were real but exaggerated by exhaustion, but still- this was not how I had imagined my first day in France. Shakily, I found myself wondering if I really had messed up, if this would work out after all. If maybe I'd be better off back at home.
Fast forward a few weeks. Maybe it's familiarity, maybe it's pleasant memories that seem to paint new layers on each place, but I find myself incredibly happy here. I like the smallness of campus. I love the cheap coffee that's honestly pretty good (and very strong), and the way my classmates and I cluster around the vending machines in the fifteen-minute breaks between classes. I find that the buildings do gleam, that the grass is a brilliant green, that the sound of the wind in the trees by the canal is a pleasant soundtrack to my life here. I love the random airplanes scattered around the campus and the coziness of my little room. I love the free bread in the cafeteria and the way I often wrap a roll in a napkin and slip it into my bag to have with dinner later. I love sipping coffee with my friends on Sunday mornings before Mass, sitting outside at little tables on picturesque city streets. I love the way the city looks at sunset, the pink buildings catching the light and bouncing it around, reverberating until everything is glowing. I love the walks with my friends to the cafeteria or to our residences, especially the walks after volleyball or scuba practice, all of us giddy with post-workout adrenaline and thankful that we have time to enjoy this life. It's the little things that make up a place, a season, and it is all these and more that have made me fall in love with being here at Supaero.
September has been a month of transition, and I think October will continue to be - summer turning more definitively to fall, routines settling, life falling into place. I'm excited for it, this next month, for the stability and adventures that I think it will bring. I'm excited to see this place change seasons and grateful that I get to live in a place for long enough to see the world around it evolve. I'm excited to see, also, how I change here, what unknown parts of myself living in this new place will reveal. I'm thankful, too, for September and all the wildness it has brought. It's been an adventure, certainly, and for that it feels like it's worth it.
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