Like this:

And I think the time has come for an evaluation of how much things have changed.

1. Language-wise, I’m far from fluent (I still mix up the past and future if I don’t watch myself), but at least I don’t get headaches anymore when listening to French TV. Also, since I actually understand what people say, my pretty much constant panic attacks have gone away- I don’t spend the entire day dreading human contact. Case in point, my host parents and I went to an art exhibit at a local caveau, and it was… alright, oddly enough. I didn’t tremble when people talked to me, there were no awkward ‘do I do the whole bisous thing, or do we shake hands’ moments (note: 99% of the time people here prefer the kisses. Must be a southern thing- somehow, I can’t imagine Parisians being quite so friendly to complete strangers.).

2. The food here is getting better and better. I don’t know if that’s because I’m actively trying to get rid of preconceptions like ‘I hate cheese, therefore I’ll hate croque-monsieurs’ (which we’re having today for dinner- we’ll see how that turns out   ), or because I’m getting used to French cuisine. Either way, I’m nowhere near as miserable as I was in September, when evrything seemed too different to possibly taste good. Although I could do without ever eating baked potatoes and cheese again. Seriously, those two simply shouldn’t be mixed

3. On the other hand, I have yet to figure out the whole chores thing with my host family. They never actually told me if they want me to do anything, so I still have to figure stuff out on my own. I figure if I put my own dishes away, keep my things somewhat orderly and try to be invisible, it’ll work out. It would be nice, though, to know when I’m supposed to do my laundry- my host mother talked about it a couple days ago, but I wasn’t really paying attention…

And we have a cat! She’s the most adorable, black-and-white ball of fluff I’ve ever seen (aside from my own Devil, of course, but that’s a whole different category of adorableness ;D  ). For some reason, she’s taken a liking to sleeping on my bed. Normally, I’d have nothing against that- I love cats- but there’s one teensy problem. I sleep in the top bed of an almost 7′ tall bunk bed. Every time the kitten jumps down I have a mini heat attack- I’m scared to jump from that height, and she just hops down like it’s nothing!

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