Happy Thanksgiving!

As usual, I really should be in bed...or packing...but I am not actually that sleepy (I think I will have a different opinion as soon as I get in bed though) and I HATE packing, so here I am. I had a delicious frenchified Thanksgiving dinner (no mashed potatos, though, which was really lame) and ate WAY too much and got to see everyone, and overall it was a really good thing to have happen.

I could tell a million stories about today, actually, but in a nutshell, there is a new job, the riot police were all over my neighborhood today, and students are still protesting, I finally have the two books I needed to buy for school, bought tickets to a soccer game, and then thanksgivinginess. And tomorrow I leave for London for a Globalization Justice conference and I'm totally not ready to leave yet. But oh well.

I did want to say a little something, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, though. During dinner, we did the whole go around the table and say what you are thankful for thing. Obviously, everyone is thankful that we have the opportunity to be here in Lyon studying and experiencing all of these wonderful things. What I had to add, though, was (a) I am thankful for my great roommate (who was sitting right next to me) and (b) I am really thankful that we have the resources to stay in touch with people back home. THis has been especially important to me, what with things being so difficult back home. I can't imagine going through all of this without being able to get emails from my mom every couple of days keeping me updated, and emails from my absolutely fantastic friends (especially big shout out to G-G, who has been great at keeping my spirits up and letting me freak out to her via email/AIM), and being able to talk to people on AIM, and even being able to talk to people on the phone every once in a while. Seriously, I can't say this for sure, but I think if I wasn't so well plugged in back home, I would be having a really difficult time here. I guess that could be seen as a negative thing, but I think with the facility of it all, I really am having an amazing immersion experience and doing the France thing while still keeping my strong connections to home, and I am infinitely thankful for that. My mom keeps reminding me to keep counting my blessings, and I really am SO lucky and SO blessed. Sometimes it's hard to recognize it when I'm worrying about things back home, or not knowing if campus will be open for the test I am supposed to have in 9 hours (seriously...I'm pretty sure I have a better sense of what's going on back home than I do of what's going on with these student strikes), or dealing with the millions of paperwork details required by French bureaucracy, or trying to get everything done on time, but when I stop for a minute and realize where I am and what I'm doing and all of the resources I have (even though sometimes I feel kind of lost in it all), I really do realize just how very blessed I am.

So there you go. That's what I'm thankful for...plus the people who take the time to read this blog and put up with the rambling and silliness of my writing.

That being said, I really need to get back to the reality of leaving tomorrow and not knowing exactly where I am going...and maybe studying some portuguese...

*bisous* and TONS of love