I'm so glad high school is over.

When I was spending the year in France, I had a big day where three things happened to me at once. It was December 17, 2001. Today is December 18, which is close enough that I'll consider it the six-year anniversary. So that's what we're going to have to discuss.

I had arrived in France on August 28, two weeks before 9/11 happened, so by the time December 17 rolled around, I had been living there for almost four months. I was in a public high school in a rural area where students came from tiny villages within a 20-kilometer radius. Originally, I had thought that I was the only American in the school, but I found out on September 11 that there was one other, Andre. I found this out because we were at school when the attacks happened (with the time difference, it was about 3 p.m.), and everyone was staring at us to see how we'd react when we all found out.

Anyway, I guess an experience like that can really make you bond, because even though Andre and I would most likely never have become friends if we'd been living in the US, we became really close over the next few months. We hung out all the time (probably not good for our progress learning French), and he was there when my wallet got stolen out of my purse in downtown Toulouse. He was the one who lent me money to call my parents from a pay phone, sobbing, to ask them to cancel my credit card.

Andre had originally been scheduled to spend only one semester in France, but he changed his mind while he was there and tried to extend his stay for the full year. However, he found out in November that his school back home wouldn't accept a full year's worth of credits from our French school, so he couldn't stay for an extra semester unless he was willing to graduate from high school a year late. Which he was not.

So, on December 17, at six a.m., he left. A group of friends saw him off at the train station, where he took the TGV to Paris to catch his flight home.

At about 10:30 that morning, at school, we had a break between classes and I went to the computer lab to check my email. I had one waiting for me from my boyfriend of a year and a half, who was in college in Canada. He emailed me every day, but this one was titled "Do not read this at school."

Think about it. If you want someone to do something, what's the best way to get them to do it? Tell them not to. Obviously I can't leave an email with a subject like that untouched. So I opened it. And in it, he broke up with me.

I totally fell apart. He was my first serious boyfriend, the first guy I'd ever been in love with. When I had gone to France and we had discussed the overseas long distance thing, we had agreed that if one of us decided that we couldn't take it anymore, we would tell the other over the phone. He had promised me that if he broke up with me, it wouldn't be over email.

I cried for the rest of the day. Everyone stared at me, and teachers dismissed me from classes. Being a foreigner definitely has its advantages, and one is that you don't always have to explain yourself.

That night, my French host parents went out for dinner, just the two of them, and the kids, myself included, all went to bed. I couldn't sleep. It was the first time I'd experienced heartbreak and it was awful. Nothing had ever prevented me from sleeping like that. I just couldn't deal with the pain, and I couldn't even call Andre because he was on a plane back to the US. The phone rang while I was lying in bed, but I didn't answer it, and everyone else was asleep or not home.

When my French parents got back, I got out of bed to say hello to them. My host mother was listening to the voice mail, and just as I got into the kitchen, where she was standing, she thrust the phone into my hand. I put my ear to the phone just in time to hear my mother say, "I wish we were there to be excited and jump up and down with you! Congratulations!" I called her back and it turned out that she had just received my acceptance letter--I had gotten into college (that link is there for those of you who keep asking where I went to school).

I had applied early decision to only the one school, and if I hadn't been accepted, I would have had to madly fill out college applications from abroad, which would have involved lots of FedExing and stress and crappy, last-minute personal statements. I had already had to do that with my National Merit essay, and the idea of doing it for multiple college applications makes me wonder what the hell we were thinking when we decided we'd bank on me getting into the one school I applied to. But luckily, I did, and also luckily, I didn't answer the phone when my mother called, because I would not have been able to fake excitement on the spur of the moment.

It's funny, remembering that day. At the time, it was so awful, and so momentous, and I was so exhausted that it just felt like cruel irony that that day was the one when I got into college. Even though I was so tired, I didn't sleep all night. I was too upset about my boyfriend, and felt too alone, and the time when I wouldn't be in France anymore and I'd be in college and supposedly have friends and whatnot just felt so far away.

And now I'm on the other end of it, and college was great and I have never regretted my choice to go to the school that I did, and I'm so lucky to have the friends that I made there. And Andre and I are still friends, although we hardly ever talk, and the amazing thing is that I'm still friends with that ex-boyfriend as well.

Do you have friends now that back in the day, you never would have expected to stay friends with?