Postscript

Yesterday on the Lex bus back to Champaign, some of the students were asking how to best manage their sleep schedule in the next days. I shared that I always adapt quickly when traveling east. Europe is easy. You stay up as late as you can the first night, get up at a normal time the next day, and the adjustment seems to sort itself out. Going west is quite another thing. I told them that I always wake up at about 3 a.m. the first night, and that it just seems to take me forever to get it right again after that. So, like clockwork today, I awakened at 3:09 a.m.

It was strange not to spend the end of my day last night updating the blog with commentary and photos. I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts and insights with all of you, and I hope you have enjoyed checking it each day of our journey. You have probably gathered by now that I love to write. In addition to keeping you all updated, this blog serves as a permanent record of our trip and is essentially my travel journal. Many of the students kept travel journals on the road, and this written remembrance is an important part of learning and a way of processing an experience.

I wrote in a journal every day when I took my "gap year" between college and graduate school, and traveled literally around the world with a backpack on my back for many months. I found the journal was a way of expressing my feelings and impressions and was a form of catharsis for me. My journal was for me only. In a time before Internet and inexpensive phone cards, writing also served as a way to keep my family updated on my travels. I wrote my parents a postcard religiously from every place I went so that they would know that I was fine. When I got home all of the postcards were in a collage on the wall of our kitchen. I know how much it meant to them to have ongoing and regular confirmation that all was well and it was originally for that reason that I created the blog. The postcards also gave them a chance to visit the places vicariously. I still have that collection of postcards and now I wonder where my journal is...?

I am somewhat old fashioned in that I believe that most things worth having involve a combination of risk, sacrifice and hard work. And the things that I value most are not things at all - my family, my health, my education, and my memories of experiences, especially my travels. We live in a culture of instant gratification. However, I also believe that for the most part there are no shortcuts in life. I speak the languages that I speak because I worked hard at it over the course of many years. I continue to work on them daily by reading newspapers, websites, watching foreign news broadcasts, speaking to people who speak the language at home and abroad. I will never stop working on my languages and I continue to add new ones every few years. Working on language is something we all do every day with our own language. We just do not think about it. It is all around us, we use it every day, and it is not stagnant but evolving all the time. I qualified the concept of shortcuts because I do think that there is a shortcut involving languages. There is no question that being in the country where a language is spoken does facilitate language learning more quickly, but only if the learner is truly engaged in the experience and is willing to take risks. Just asking for something at a store can feel like a risk. The more someone truly immerses oneself and notices the surroundings, the more this shortcut aids the process.

I hope this trip has made language learning relevant to them and that they recognize its value, and how much richness it brings to life. I hope this trip will be for them a memory that they carry with them on their life's journey and look back with fondness on the times that we shared. It was indeed a truly delightful trip to France.