Hopelessness and Desperation Lead to Insanity

Jobless, futureless, and emotionally devastaed, Alexa and I did indeed move to France, though we each went our separate ways, to become English Language Assistants for apathetic French teenagers.

I left the United States with my eight million pounds of luggage (maybe that's an exageration. But it did weigh 130 pounds and at the time I only weighed 105) and a shining hopeful heart.

By the time Heathrow finished with me I had been crying for four hours straight to the point where crying had made me nauseated, I had caused a bit of a scene after yelling at the girl behind the airline counter and subsequently hurling my undergarments at her and her co-workers who stepped in to save her, I hadn't slept in 38 hours, and it was beginning to dawn on me that I had left absolutely everything in the world I knew across an entire ocean.

The future, once again, looked bleak.

However, soon enough I arrived in Toulouse, the city of my heart, a city I knew and know better than any other city in the world, and I began to feel that perhaps things were about to start looking up.

I took the shuttle from the airport to the train station, where I was to take a train to my new home, Moissac.

The woman at the ticket counter told me that due to a strike, the only train to Moissac was leaving at a 4:$5, but there was a bus that left at 2:00 that I could get on. I thanked her, got the ticket, then walked the block to the bus station. With all my luggage. I sat there for nearly an hour before I noticed that my bus wasn't coming up on the schedule screen. I went up to the desk to ask about this phenomenon and was informed that I had been sold a ticket to a bus that didn't exist. I got my luggage and dragged it back to the train station and went to customer service. The woman told me that yes there was a bus, but since it was an SNCF bus and not a TER bus the bus people just didn't know about it. But if I waited around gates 18-25 I would see it eventually. So I dragged my luggage back to the bus station.
Aftter at least an hour of waiting, I found an SNCF employee who explained to me that the bus really did not exist.
I started to cry.
I was still crying as 2:00 came and went with no sign of any bus. I dragged my luggage BACK TO THE TRAIN STATION and went back to customer servcice and this time a different woman told me that there was no such bus and that my ticket was for some train that left at 4:45. Which, incidentally, would put me in Moissac JUST after the school closed for the weekend and JUST after I could no longer get a key and would be locked out for three nights.
I was crying as I purchased an international telephone card and still crying as I used a payphone to call my father in the US.

"Blluuurrg aaaah hello??"

"DADDY I WANT TO COME HOME GET ME HOME I AM IN TRAIN STATION WITH A FAKE BUS TICKET I DON'T LIKE IT HERE."

"Danielle? It is four in the morning."

"JUST GET ON THE INTERNET AND BUY ME A TICKET TO THE UNITED STATES. IMMEDIATELY. NOT EVEN A REAL BUS TOO MUCH LUGGAGE."

"I can't understand you."

"HOME! PLEASE! NO MORE FRANCE!"

"Four in the morning. Deal with it. I have faith. In you. Good night."

"I WANT TO TALK TO MY MOTHER."

Click.

I was left holding the receiver and my luggage and a ticket to a train I wasn't sure would take me to a destination I wasn't sure I wanted to go to.

The rest of the trip was equally horrifying, and among other things, I ended up throwing 110 pounds of my luggage at a very surprised and very angry French man in a suit standing at the bottom of the wrong flight of stairs.

However, despite the continuing pain, anguish, and near homicide, I did eventually arrive in Moissac.

And as the train pulled into the station, my exact thoughts were:
Oh. My. God. I left behind everything I know and love for THIS?
Because the train station was rotting away in front of me, the houses looked abandoned and weeds were taking over everything and it just looked like death.
I got off the train, and remembered the instructions that had been given to me: take a cab.

Take a cab? Take a CAB? WHAT CAB?

My cell had run out of batteries, I didn't know the number of a cab company (as it turned out, Moissac has one cab company, and that cab company has one cab, and that cab is almost always in Montauban). It was getting dark, there was no payphone and even if there was one you need a special card for it WHICH I DIDN'T HAVE.

I decided then that if I survived until the next day I was going right back home and never going back to France for the rest of my life ever in protest of the existence of the entirety of EUROPE.
There is more to the story, but this is becoming long, so in the interest of time I will say this. I eventually, after some more anguish and suffering and another day and a rooster, made it to my new home where I immediately met a girl who was to become one of the best friends I will ever have in this world who immediately did not like me. The school year started, and I had amazing students, worked with amazing teachers, met amazing people and did things I still don't believe I did. I made friends with people from 8 different countries, traveled to 9 countries, danced all night, showered in champagne, straddled two continents, watched the sun set over the sea from the steps of the Temple of Poseidon.

The bad decision wasn't moving to France. It was deliberately deciding not to spend a second year there by rejecting the position I was offered. It is the only decision I have ever made in my life that I truly and utterly regret.