La Famille Est Toute.

"Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood." The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
Which I am currently reading, along with slowly making my way through the seventh Harry Potter book IN FRENCH. OOOOO.
Anyway, I am feeling this homesickness that I have never felt before. When I am at camp it is very different. There's the connection, still, of my country. I am in the USA. Here, I am a stranger in a strange land.
I saw a very short, very beautiful, and very sad animated movie once about this couple who falls in love and then one of them has to go on a space shuttle to... somewhere. They send messages, very much like video-chat voice-mail to each other, but as the shuttle gets further and further away from Earth, the messages take longer and longer to receive, until eventually, she has died of old age before she gets the last message.
It's the knowledge that I am so far away from my family that there is a delay in time: that terrifies my a little bit. No... a lot.
Anyway: this coming week has a lot going on. Thursday is Bastille Day, so no school (thank god), but I can't party too hard because I have school all day the next day, as well... except that in the afternoon Friday I'm going to Nice, so I'll be skipping that class. NICE!
I'm excited for Nice. I'm just going for one day, all day Saturday, and so I'll probably spend most of it at the beach, then make a stop somewhere touristy like a museum or church or something, then go shopping a bit, get some food, and fin! I have a 20 minute presentation on Monday, though, which is why I'm going back late Saturday, so I can have time on Sunday (and energy) to prepare for that. I already have about half of it done, but still.
Some other things I'm thinking about:
in France, there are no storm/screen windows/doors. When you open your window on the first or fifth floor, it's just OPEN. I shouldn't say "in France," I should say, "in Annecy," because I can't imagine that in big cities like Paris people would just leave bottom-floor windows open. I... no.
Another thing: kids are the same everywhere. While Americans toddlers are shouting across the way "MOM! LOOK!" French kids are shouting "MAMA! REGARDS!" I love it.
When I speak English with Russians/Serbians: I start speaking English as though I am not fluent: grammatical correctness et al. It's very disturbing.
That's pretty much it for today.