First Post--Before the Adventure Begins!

Saying Goodbye

Obviously I didn't make the decision to au pair rashly--but there are just some things that I didn't think about. Like how hard it was going to be to say goodbye.

And as people who have seen me recently can attest, I am REALLY BAD at it.

After saying it so many times, I've decided the word itself is bad. Goodbye. It automatically sounds so final.

Naturally, I've also been thinking about all the French ways to say farewell and I think it's different than the way it is in English. It's more like a variation on "see you."

I can't translate the famous, "Au revoir!" literally--except to interpret that "voir" is "to see," so with the prefix, "revoir" is to see AGAIN. So it means something along the lines of "to the next time I see you again." Which is so much preferable and more appropriate for my current situation. I'm not really saying "goodbye" to anyone, just "see you later."

For me, the most accurate phrase I could use would probably be "A l'annee prochaine!" (See you next year). But a year sounds like too long of a time, so I'm sticking with "Au revoir."