Weekend Firsts

I have planned another trip – this time to Poland. My flight back cost only .49 cents! Okay not really because taxes take the total up to 30 euros. But still! A round-trip ticket for only 60 euros is pretty awesome. I will be heading out on the 9^th of October. I am also in the process of planning a trip to Ireland with a girl I met at a party the other night. Exciting stuff!

I made my first call home this weekend. It was good to talk to my parents and not as hard as I thought it would be. It’s sort of weird – I thought it would be really hard to call home because I am going through this odd homesick thing that I don’t really understand. It’s not that I’m homesick, really, it’s…hmm. Well I think it’s that being so far away from home and from America is making me appreciate a lot of the things that I have when I’m there. For example: I miss being able to call my brother and leave him a voicemail when something really funny happens to me, I miss driving my car around with the windows down, I miss walking across campus to go to debate practice, I miss the feeling of being only 7 hours in the car or a phone call away from home. Not to say that missing these things is lessening the enjoyment I feel every day that I am here, rather it is that noticing I miss these things is making me appreciate both my time in the States and my time here all the more.

I also missed my first debate tournament this weekend. I think it is probably a good thing that I don’t have internet in my apartment because if I did I would have been watching for updates every hour. As it was, I checked for updates while at a café on Sunday and got the results through Saturday night. I was there with some friends and they thought I was crazy because as I was reading the results from each round I was grunting or shaking my fists in the air with joy. Hahaha! If you are also thinking I’m crazy, let me put this in perspective: I have been debating for the last 7 years; I have spent the last 2 with one partner. It feels weird to know that he is debating and I am not, and weirder still to watch the world of debate turning while not being a part of it. If I had graduated, it wouldn’t be so odd. It is just weird to be a Bearcat, but a Bearcat half-way around the world unable to help her team win stuff. It will be good to get back to them!

Other weekend firsts: first party on a boat, first time seeing a blue Eiffel Tower (to honor France's current presidency of the EU, I'm told), and first interaction with French children.

Actually the story about the children is funny, so I will end with that. My friend Martina and I were at the park sitting on a hill in the sun and talking when we heard something hit the ground behind us. We looked back to find a large chestnut had landed, and it wasn’t from the tree near us. Another one landed and we looked around to find children hiding behind a bush and throwing chestnuts at us. After a few more I got a little annoyed (their aim was bad, but if they had hit one of us it would have hurt) so I got up and chased after them. They ran away and hid so I let them go, but they knew we were mad. Their solution was to come back and shout the only English phrase they knew, “You are beautiful!!” We couldn’t be mad after that – who can resist flattery?? :)