5 months. where has the time gone?!

i have now been in france/ europe for 5 months. where has the time gone? how is it possible that i have already been here longer than the amount of time i have left?! time seriously needs to slow down a little bit. my french has improved a lot, but i am so glad i am staying for the next semester because i still don't feel it is good enough to go home. plus, although i have managed to see 14 cities in 5 countries already, there is still so much more i want to see!
my trip up to this point has been nothing short of incredible. i have made so many new friends and seen so many new things, sometimes i can't believe this is really my life.
and sometimes i still can't believe that i am actually here. i mean i have always known i was going to study abroad. hell, i showed up in the eap office during spring quarter of freshman year to check if there was anything i needed to start doing to apply then. they sent me away telling me to come back in the fall. so i came back in the fall (the first week of the quarter i believe, maybe the second), and started the process of applying. there was a full month during which it was actually possible to turn in the application. i was there the first day, at 7:30 in the morning. the office didn't even open until 9. i was second in line, first for my program. i probably would have been the first one there except i lived downtown while my friend lived on campus.
in case you are wondering why i was there so ridiculously early, it is because applicants would be accepted on a first come first serve basis, so long as their application was acceptable. i wasn't going to risk losing my dream simply because i procrastinated.
then i spent the next weeks just waiting to here for a response. when my friend found out she got into her program, i started checking my email every 10 seconds. literally. (you can ask my mom, she got to watch me freaking out wondering when my email was finally going to arrive). it took 2  more hours before i finally got the response i had been waiting for for weeks (well years really, i guess). one that i was sure i already knew, but i needed in written form before it would seem real.
it's strange to realize now that that was over a year ago that i actually applied.

i have heard second semester goes by even faster than first semester, and i really don't want to believe that is true. first semester passed in the blink of an eye, and i am nowhere near ready to say bye to france yet. so do me a favor, time, and slow down a bit this semester would ya? it really would mean a lot. thanks. ariane.