Thoughts and Prayers

I promise to do more spring break postings as the week goes on, but as I am trying to keep emotions and thoughts up to date on the blog, I figured today needed to be mentioned.

This morning started normally enough, with an alarm going off too loudly, and hair that never seems to lay just right. That was when the normalcy stopped. Liana came into the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth to inform me that Osama Bin Laden had been killed the night before. I was a little out of it and shocked, but quickly turned on my laptop only to find about a million postings, and messages about it on my facebook. CNN wasn't any better.
Now I realize that it has almost been 10 years since the 9/11 attacks and that Bin Laden has been very much wanted by the u.s. for that time, but what I can't wrap my head around is that there was no trial, no capture, no anything. Just....death. I am not going to say he didn't deserve it, because frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I do know that I most definitely feel it could have been handled in a different way with still doing our country justice. Seeing everyone posting celebratory statuses, and hearing about fireworks being set off in major cities in celebration of death is sort of sickening. Our country needs to quit the eye for an eye bandwagon and go back to what is real, and good. While I understand that people are happy he was caught, one mans death doesn't end all of the problems that came with 9/11, nobody dying will ever bring back the lives lost there or of those who have died since in battle.
Now is the moment for the future school teacher to come out in me and wish for all of you to be very careful and safe in what you plan/do from now on. Because I am abroad, the embassy sends updates when things happen, in the form of email. They have sent one out saying the Europe is on alert right now due to the recent death of Bin Laden, and to be careful and aware of things while travelling. If the alert gets worse, or becomes 'red' we will also be notified, but right now it's just basically telling us they are uneasy about what could happen now, and to make good decisions. I give that advice to all of you, please be smart about things, and be safe. I don't want to hear about more deaths that could have been prevented.   Which sort of brings me to the other things about today that just made it overall kind of sad. I found out about a death of a student who attended my high school. He was only 19, and I don't want to post any private information about it, but I just want to say that he and his family are in my thoughts and prayers.
The other thing is that we had a moment of silence today in class for a student who had been killed over our break. Again, I don't feel it's right to post information regarding it on my blog, but I think the feelings are worth mentioning. My history professor explained the situation to our class and when she started you could hear papers shuffling, chairs moving, chatter, tapping of pencils,etc. every annoying sound in a classroom imaginable was going on, but the more she told us, the quieter it became. During the moment of silence, it was just that. Absolutely.Silent. I had an eerie feeling come over me during it, that even though we are all from different countries, speak differing languages and for some the only thing in common is that we are studying french...we all felt the pain of that family in that moment. We all joined together in silence for it, and my words don't even begin to describe how weird that feels.
All of this combined with the recent devestation in Japan, and the tornadoes that happened in the US are almost to much to bear. I've been praying a lot more lately and finding it helps me more than it ever had before; maybe that's part of growing up.

For a while now I have been thinking about wanting to stay in France or if I am ready to come home. While I can very much say I love France, and Angers has become home, all of the events that have happened today just reminded me that no matter how much I love the scenery of the place I am in, or the places I can easily visit, my family and friends back home are more important, and I can't wait to see them. I am not ready to return quite yet, but thankfully I have about 5 weeks of France left before that comes, and I think by then I will be ready to part ways with this wonderful country, with full intent to return later.