The Final Weeks

What am I doing here?

Why am I still asking myself this question? I've been living in Lyon, France, for 6 months and one week, and I still don't quite comprehend my own role here. My students think my class is a joke; the teachers don't know what to do with me; I spend my time reading books in the salle de profs and sitting on trains.

This is all besides the two-week-long vacations every six weeks, of course. I know, I know: I have nothing to complain about. But, still.

This whole living in another country thing makes for one irreconcilable identity crisis, that's for sure. I teach you an expression you'll never remember: "to hold one's breath"; you see me as the girl with the funny accent you want to show your friends; I am your American friend who fits in only because we are a group of British and Mauritians and half-this and half-that. I am inbetween student and adult status, in an indecisive expatriate limbo, waiting for my life to decide itself. But in another country, it only gets more complicated. So, who am I?

Who knows. Maybe we'll figure that one out when I get back to California. Or when I come back to France for the third time, for another month or seven. Or never. All I know is that I need to experience, and I need to write.

What am I doing here? I am holding my breath. And in the meantime, I write.