Confidence.

It's incredible that in ONE WEEK here, I've gained more confidence in speaking French than I have in 7 years of studying it. Ridiculous.

I didn't really start to think about it until last night at dinner when Nou Nou was like "You know tomorrow it will be one week?" I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it either.

The best part of the whole thing is that I don't care when I screw up, mispronounce something, make something feminine instead of masculine, or use the wrong tense. Who cares? Nou Nou corrects me all the time. But I've decided that I like it and it doesn't bother me.

For the past 7 years, I've stressed over saying and writing everything perfectly...which often meant that I spoke as little as possible, or spoke English when I could. But here, you need French to survive. Literally.

The other day, I walked into SFR (a French cell phone company) and had a 10-minute conversation with the guy who worked there about buying an internet key. The same day, a woman from Crypus overheard me on Skype speaking English at McDonald's and asked if I could help her find her hotel, since she couldn't speak French. I called the hotel for her and successfully got directions for her from MacDo.

A year ago, even a month ago, I would have been too scared to even think about attemping to hold any sort of conversation with anyone in French. But now, I talk to Nou Nou for atleast 2 hours every night at dinner. It's incredible.

I'm still trying to get into a routine here. Hopefully by next week I'll have one down. I atleast have my morning commute down. It's exactly 12 minutes walking--just enough time for me to listen to Taylor Swift's new song "Today Was a Fairytale" three times. If you haven't heard it yet, I HIGHLY recommend it. Since I purchased it on iTunes 2 days ago, I've listened to it 58 times. I think I have a problem. Actually, I danced to it all the way home last night with Sue. People stopped and looked at me. I didn't care.

I walk through the neighborhood, past the Council of Europe--which I now proudly call my place of work, over the pedestrian bridge--carefully tiptoeing around the mountains of dog turds, and finally make my way to 7 rue Schiller.

That's all for today...here's some T. Swift lyrics for your enjoyment :)

"Time slows down whenever you're around
But can you feel this magic in the air?
It must have been the way you kissed me
Fell in love when i saw you standing there
It must have been the way
Today was a fairytale"