The Final Entry

To my dear friends in France & Canada: Though it's been 2 1/2 months since I left, the beautiful memories of my 7 months in France continue to drift around my head like a dream that I never want to forget (and never will). This final entry to my blog is for you. I wrote it on May 3rd, approximately 20 minutes after saying goodbye to the people who would have such a great impact on my life, and who I can't wait to see again soon (only 1 year, 9 1/2 months to go!). I love you all. Now, turn on a bit of Mumford & Sons, and get readin'...

May 3, 2010

May 3rd. Whoever thought this day would actually come? By god, not me. This is the last day of the best year of my life. I'm going home. But really, I'm leaving home. I just said goodbye to my home on the quai: Bertrand, Fabrice, Megan. The three people who mean the most to me at this moment. Without them, this year would've been merely another extended vacation with common friends. But fate had something in store for me. From the first week Meg & I knew each other, we clicked. It just worked, so well. Never have I had such a friend who, as just a friend, has so touched my life and my soul.

Bertrand and Fabrice, my brothers, always there to protect us and make us feel valuable. I never expected to become so close to them, to meet such beautiful people.

The sunrise out my train window is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen--actually. Bright yellow sun and pink clouds over the green rolling hills called a French landscape. Whoever though I'd so fall in love with France? So many parts of the culture I hated, I've come to love. This place has become my home. How lucky am I? What a beautiful existence that I can live, when I take risks.

Yesterday, after we had 9 a.m. oysters and were walking around the Sunday morning markets along the Saone, me in my dress from last night, naked legs (oh la la) and Bertrand's flip-flops since mine broke--I looked around at the four of us, sleep-deprived and hungover but joking and laughing, and I saw how odd we must look to the banal French around us, and I was PROUD. So proud to be a part of such an amazing group of people. And the most assorted group of people, ever--there's Erik, the 35-year-old 9-year-old at heart who's always at the Wallace (with quizmaster Ian) and rolls around on the floor to Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" at sunrise. This is after Fabrice puts on "Waiting For the Sun" (The Doors). Meanwhile, the girls lean heads on shoulders, tapping their feet with the last bit of energy they have left. The sky gets lighter, somebody's laughing, somebody's passed out, somebody emerges from a room and walks out the front door after waking up four hours later.

Amy takes pictures of her new boyfriend on the floor, who's American. Amy, the British/French 27-year-old English teacher who showed us the ropes, answered all our questions. The one who, at 3 a.m. when things start to quiet down, will pull a chair into the middle of the room and start dancing on it. And makes it look cool. Not overdone. Just fun.

Meanwhile, Meg and I alternate between nearly passing out on our chairs and holding each other up while swaying to the music. Bertrand and Fabrice speak creole to each other and Yanesh is laughing hysterically at something they said. Daryl is quietly watching while a few other people wander in and out of consciousness.

The Doors, Lou Reed, Mumford & Sons -- these guys bring out the truth in us. Make us melancholy, make us laugh, put us in an awed stupor at the bizarity of our existence and how perfect a simple night of staying up dancing and drinking with friends until sunrise (or well after) can be...

July 15th

...Mumford & Sons comes on the radio, and I'm thrown back to a time of simple happiness, when Meg & I would take the metro to Rue Pravaz for a music rehearsal with some Pastis, or our weeks would be defined by Wallace Thursdays and Flannigan's Mondays. I miss it so much. But I'll be back. Thanks for the memories, everyone. I love you.

Things that actually happened in Ireland

Soo...finally back in Lyon for just 5 more days until my return to California. Ridiculous.

Allow me to recap my last two weeks, the best and strangest two weeks since I moved to France: Meg and I went to Dublin and then Cork for a week, and were supposed to go to Amsterdam and Belgium before heading home. But since the volcanic ash cloud decided to linger indefinitely over European airspace (thank you, Eyjafjallajoekull), Meg and I were stuck in Ireland, so I decided to look up my distant relatives living on a farm near Skibbereen. Turned out to be the best phone call of my life. Meg and I ended up staying on their farm for a week; they gave us a house to ourselves and took off work to drive us around every day and see the most beautiful coastline I've ever seen (yes, even better than California).

My relatives live in the same farmhouse that's been in the family for five generations and probably longer. It's a dairy farm, and their cows produce some of the milk for Dubliner cheese (best cheese in the world). Across the field, you can see the quaint little stone church where my great-great-grandmother was baptized. From the top of the hill, you can see the westernmost point of Ireland (and nearest point of Europe to America), Fastnet, which is a lighthouse on a rock 8 miles from the mainland into the Atlantic. Alan, one of the sons, used his friendly connections to get us on a boat out to that rock, which is probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my life (though the choppy boat ride back was terrifying). The day before, his older brother Kevin took us on a 6-hour driving tour around the area, pointing out memorials and giving us history/Irish language lessons along the way, like. Good stuff.

Later, we ran with the cows in the field and took 800,000 pictures of them. Approximately.

Other accomplishments:

1. Drinking fresh cow's milk out of a newly washed Irish whisky bottle.
2. Watching grown Irish men play indoor soccer "in town."
3. Eating delicious Irish stew, every day (and undelicious black pudding, once).
4. Watching Pat, the father, drink Budweiser out of a coffee mug. Later, learning Alan's name from the coffee mug he was holding, which had "Alan" painted on it.
5. Irish folk dancing with Pat and Mary, the parents.
6. Listening to an entire U2 album. Once. (Then switching to Coldplay on repeat).
7. Meeting people named Patrick, Mary, and Seamus.

Dublin was great, too. We tried to do a pub crawl but bailed and ended up going to 7 pubs on our own that night. It was fun, but nothing compared to our farm life. I felt like Paris Hilton on The Simple Life, only younger and slightly less blonde.

All in all, it was a brilliant vacation; by far the best accidental one I've ever had. From now on, I'm only going to travel places that lie in the direct path of active volcanos.

Iceland Volcano-1, Maggie-0

Icelandic volcanic eruptions have caused the cancellation of our flight to Amsterdam and we're now stuck in Cork, Ireland, indefinitely....good thing we love Ireland :)

Annecy

Check out pictures of the beautiful city of Annecy, here!

Sophie & I did a day trip to Annecy. That's all I'm going to say for now, because I have to pack for Ireland! Coming up: two weeks in Dublin, Cork, Amsterdam, Brussels and Bruges. See you all back in California in one month!

The Final Weeks

What am I doing here?

Why am I still asking myself this question? I've been living in Lyon, France, for 6 months and one week, and I still don't quite comprehend my own role here. My students think my class is a joke; the teachers don't know what to do with me; I spend my time reading books in the salle de profs and sitting on trains.

This is all besides the two-week-long vacations every six weeks, of course. I know, I know: I have nothing to complain about. But, still.

This whole living in another country thing makes for one irreconcilable identity crisis, that's for sure. I teach you an expression you'll never remember: "to hold one's breath"; you see me as the girl with the funny accent you want to show your friends; I am your American friend who fits in only because we are a group of British and Mauritians and half-this and half-that. I am inbetween student and adult status, in an indecisive expatriate limbo, waiting for my life to decide itself. But in another country, it only gets more complicated. So, who am I?

Who knows. Maybe we'll figure that one out when I get back to California. Or when I come back to France for the third time, for another month or seven. Or never. All I know is that I need to experience, and I need to write.

What am I doing here? I am holding my breath. And in the meantime, I write.

6 weeks

(March 19, 2010)

"I bathed in the water at Lourdes today..

This place gives me the unusual desire to embrace the world...

I'm not sure if it was necessarily a life-changing experience, but it reminded me I have a spiritual side and need to cultivate it."

I spent two days in Lourdes & Toulouse with Meg and her dad this weekend. Lourdes, as you can see in the photo, has a cathedral that looks a little too much like the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. Toulouse, the "rose-colored city," has a lot of old-school brick buildings but cannot compare to the picturesque beauty and charm of Lyon.

The trip made me realize just how much I'm in love with Lyon, and how little time I have left. 6 weeks to the day, in fact. It's a strange, strange existence that we live here. We play quiz night every Monday at Flannigan's, the new Irish pub, and every Thursday at The Wallace (our usual); we try a random bouchon Lyonnais every month with a French friend (and nearly gag every time); we're never in the same place for more than 3 weeks at a time (at most).

Going back to Santa Clara, CA? It's going to be insanely exciting to see everyone for the first few weeks. And then I'm going to cry for Lyon.

Morocco

The Hamman. I heard it was a scrub down and massage for 150 dirham (13.4 euros). Not bad, I thought, I'll take it.

I had one more day in Marrakech, on my own, as Mike had left in the morning. What else was I going to do? So I walked around the souks one last time, stopped at Earth Cafe for a fruit juice and some think time, and headed to the spa for "hamman," the unknown word which spoke of mysterious healing and tranquil relaxation, to me.

But I didn't realize it would be so...traditional.

"Take all your clothes off, except your underwear," the hostess told me in a lounge area filled with half-naked women. Oh, this is so not what I expected (and yet, what did I expect? Everything else in Morocco had been unexpected and exciting, why not this?).

I knew at that point that this was going to be an experience unlike any other, and I could either quit right then and there or just throw up my hands and go with it.

So I threw up my hands in prayer to Allah.
And I took off my clothes.

***
Earlier that week, I had my fair share of disorienting experiences, including a visit to a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains on market day, where I was not only the only white woman around, but also the only woman for miles, as all the men from the surrounding mountain towns had come via donkey to do the weekly "grocery shopping" in this dusty center of Amizmiz. I was stared down by at least four hundred pairs of Berber eyes, but they were not threatening--only curious. Nonetheless, like so many other encounters in Morocco, it was by far a humbling experience.
***

The hostess came back and led me through the lounge to a doorway that in my memory of Moroccan films, led to exactly what I dreaded: a marble tile room filled with buckets of steaming water and naked women. The dense steam from the room wrung my lungs out like a towel; I felt as though I were breathing through a straw.

My "masseuse," Fatiha, led me to one side of the room (apparently the "white foreigner" side, as one other plump whitish woman occupied this space, opposite of a group of beautifully tanned Moroccan women on the other side of the room). She sat me down on a yellow mat against the wall and left me there. What was I supposed to do?

Trying my best not to look like it was my first time in the Hamman (although my blonde hair and deer-in-the-headlights look had already given me away), I imitated the other women and poured hot water on myself, then picked up the washcloth-loofah-sandpaper thing and tried it out on my feet first. Ouch.

***
It's not easy to imitate someone of an entirely different religion, lifestyle, continent. Walking through the markets of Marrakech, I attempted to dress modestly, but my attire of long sleeves and pants did not match the traditional dress and headscarf of Moroccan women. I heard the call to prayer ringing from the mosques five times a day like clockwork, but didn't know how to respond. In the souks, my efforts of bargaining were successful, but I could come nowhere near the market price that a Moroccan could get for a common tajine. My foreigner status stuck, unalterable like the stamp on my passport.
***

An eternity later, Fatiha came back, looked at me and snickered (showing her white, if not complete, set of teeth), and took a handful of caramel-like muck and started washing me with it. Not strange at all, a foreign woman soaping up every part of my exposed body--and then some. Whatever, I thought, I can handle this.

But then Fatiha put the sandpaper washcloth around her hand and got to work sanding off my skin, nerves, and finally my bones, leaving me with what felt like an osteoporosic skeleton. When I realized (after opening my eyes) that the gray particles on my skin were not in fact clay but skin itself, I nearly gagged. Exfoliation at its best.

Strangely enough, the longer the scrubbing lasted, the better it felt. Fatiha wasn't just buffing off my dead skin. She was cleansing my body of the dust and ache of my two weeks of travel from Berlin to Marrakech. It was a complete over-stimulation of the senses, but I did not yet want to leave this beautiful country that was simultaneously so alien yet so familiar.

***
The spices lure,
The cats prowl,
Mosaic-laden palaces remind,
Friendly local banter.
Tajines smoke in the corners of crusty cafes,
Filled with tumeric and saffron,
Creating the finest of foods that no character-less spotless restaurant could provide.
Jovial bargaining with your "friends" of the souks
Your eyes a blur with color.
This is Morocco.
***

The clay massage that followed was a relief; I lay there for 20 minutes letting it soak in and realizing that nobody else in the place gave a damn that I was nearly-naked. How freeing is that? The final rinse off and hair wash made me hard-pressed to keep from laughing, as Fatiha time and again dumped a large bucket of steaming water over my bowed frame (and into my underwear). Afterward, I sat in the lounge drinking tea, enveloped in a giant white bathrobe and breathing in the fresh air.
This was Morocco.

Granada

(February 21st, 2010)

We walked into the Hostal Antares in central Granada and were greeted by a man with meaning. Senor hostel owner Javier had a huge smile on his face, big cheery eyes that were magnified by his bifocals, and a habit of chittering about how welcome we were in this city. He was like Mr. Miagi, but spun up into the lively scattered personality of the wizard Merlin. I've never seen someone so delighted to show us the functions of the hallway microwave.

Javier's idol is Jimmy Hendrix. "Peace and freedom for everyone! I love Jimmy Hendrix. His Philosophy, Yeah!" I was anxious just to bump into him during our stay for fear that he would pop out at me like a jack-in-the-box on steroids. "Yeah! Woo! Jimmy Hendrix! Wapow!"

But his intentions were good. Tonight we asked him about going to Morocco, and he gave us some advice and then interrupted himself to say, "Wait! Give me five minutes. FIVE. Hang on--I find for you. I find bus schedule!" Sure enough, four-and-a-half minutes later, we had our own copy of the bus schedule for the next day. We left with his final words of advice ringing in our ears: "Remember: Freedom & Imagination. It's easy!"

Berlin

(February 18th, 2010)

The building was made up of filthy gray brick. Giant colorful graffiti murals covered its eastern facade, where chunks of brick missing from the wall showed evidence of WWII shelling. Nearby stood a trailer park, slippery patches of blackened snow, and scaffolding along its front. It was Kunsthaus Tacheles.

As we crossed Oranienburger Strasse in the Berlin-Mitte quarter, our eyes were drawn to a dark gaping hole in the front of this building, where graffiti covered every inch of surface. Inside, a cold cement staircase led up into the realms of some black abyss from which rock 'n roll music was drafting.

Like a medusa, the graffiti snaking up the walls lured us to climb the chilled staircase, apprehensions aside. Two flights up and already we felt like we were in a vertigo trance of color and words. The rock 'n roll got louder as we continued to climb.

What at first warned us to avoid the place--the layers of graffiti--then intrigued us to find the end of its painted madness. But it did not end. As we rounded the final staircase, a blast of music and color hit us square in the face from the single open doorway. This was no run-down building for drug addicts, or homeless refuge. This was a gallery with the work of abstract Belarusian artist Alex Rodin.

And it was some of the most beautiful work I've ever seen. 10-foot-high canvases of hundreds of colors imagining a sort of cosmic existence--a hand or an eye with fifty little scenes incorporated into the big picture--this type of work was exactly the reward I needed for braving the disconcerting entrance to the Kunsthaus Gallery. I bought a print after spending time reveling in the beauty of art paired with music.
This was Berlin.

Mischief on the Metro

Today on my morning metro ride to work, I was terrorized by two 11-year-olds.

I was sitting reading my Lyon Plus, which had a rather boring article about the US ambassador's visit to Lyon to present a plaque or something, when all of a sudden I found a baseball cap on my head. I turned to see an 11-year-old French garcon looking at me in feigned astonishment and pointing to his friend, "C'etait lui!" It was him! Right. I give him back the cap.

Back to my article about the plaque, I realized that this could happen again, and if it did, I would play a trick on these boys. Sure enough, approximately 1.35 minutes later, the cap was back on my head, but this time I was quick. I grabbed the cap, walked out of the metro, whose doors were about to close, and smirked at the yells from the French boys behind me for their hat back. 'Well,' I thought, 'they are just kids. They're harmless. I'm not really gonna take their hat. Plus, this isn't my stop.' So, being the nice & friendly American that I am (or naive and blonde, as these French boys seemed to think), I gave the hat back to the boy who had run after me and sat myself at the other, far end of the car.

At the last stop, I got off and made my way to the exit. Of course, the boys walked directly by me, so I decided to give them a look of dissatisfaction, so they could know their wrongdoing (to touch a stranger on the metro is a major faux-pas). Crack! One of the boys sticks his leg out in front of mine, which hurts but doesn't cause me to trip, as was his intention. I was pissed.

"Excusez-moi! C'etait tres impoli, ca!" I sternly rebuked the he-children. Excuse-me, that was very RUDE! I was flabbergasted--as were they, apparently, as I left them staring in disbelief at the reality that this tall, long blonde-haired foreigner actually spoke French.

I walked away laughing to myself.

Bread

Bread is such a food staple in France, that even when eating a meal which consists mainly of bread, such as the croque monsieur, the French will eat a baguette on the side.
(croque monsieur: a hot ham and cheese--typically emmental or gruyere--grilled sandwich with lots and lots of butter--basically as staple a food to France as pb&j is to the States).

Meg & I spent the weekend at one of my English professor's homes, where we drooled over the cuteness of Maxou, the cat, almost as much as over her 17-month-old son, Hugo, the tiniest little Frenchman I've ever met with the biggest smile I've ever seen from a Frenchman.

After a jaunt to the local piscine, where I found I could barely lift my pinky finger after a mere hour of swimming (it's hard to stay in shape when it's snowing outside and you keep eating bread and cheese with wine every five seconds), we ate a delicious lunch, which included: a salad made almost entirely out of croutons, with baguette bread on the site, and a two croque monsieurs each, with baguette bread on the side.

Normally, when you eat a French lunch (meat, potatoes, cheese, some kind of sauce), you use the baguette bread to mop up the sauce and such left on the plate. Today, there was so much bread--in the salad, on the table, on my plate, crumbs flying everywhere in a frenzy of floury dust--that I found myself finishing off the meal by using that last piece of baguette bread to mop up the bread crumbs off my plate.

Perfectly French

Three-and-a-half hours west into the heart of France is Thiers, a tiny town perched on the hills of a typical French countryside.

In this cutlery capital of France, Meg & I spent three lovely days eating incredible gourmet French food in the home of Jean-Mi & Martine, the so perfectly French host parents of our friend Isabel--and, we got to wake up to this view every morning:

We had a personal tour of the tiny town, where residents still attend mass in churches built in the 1100s and ruins of cutlery factories line the river, a perfect scene for an impressionist painting.



Food adventures of the weekend included the traditional raclette, a meat and cheese miracle, and a meal based entirely on meat (beef, pork, veal, etc.) cooked on a hot stone on the table. Never have I eaten so much meat in my life, and never has it been so good.

We also took a quick trip to Clermont-Ferrand, where we gaped open-mouthed at a cathedral built entirely of volcanic stone. To check out photos of these two ideally French towns, click here! or click on the "Thiers" link on the photo menu on the right. Enjoy!

La Greve!

Only in France would I get the day off because my fellow teachers are going on strike :) Vive la France!

Sunny Day in Lyon

Today I took a lovely stroll along the river in the unusally warm sunshine that came with the scorching 8 degrees celsius temperature (46 degrees farenheit, for my American friends).

I sat down to unwrap my pb sandwich, folding back the tinfoil and lifting the deliciousness of an American staple food to my mouth when--splat. Splat splat. Three dollops of bird poop landed on the ground directly in front and on the side of me. Delicious.

I looked up. There was a single tree hovering directly over half of my bench, and I was in the middle. So, I scootched over until I was exactly 3 milimeters from the edge of the tree-less half of the bench. And quickly ate my pb sandwich in shoulder-hunched apprehension.

Tapatio

Today I sat in the infrequent sunshine filtering through the windowed balcony doors and ate huevos in a tortilla with Tapatio hot sauce.

The fact that the cheese I had to use with my Mexican meal was Emmental or that the doors were still closed to keep out the cold didn't bother me one bit. :)

Halfway

It's mid-January. I've been here 3 1/2 months. I have 3 1/2 months to go. Weird.

Finally completed my medical visit today (2nd try). Sitting in the waiting room with 6 other English assistants, I asked how everyone was liking work. We looked tired, a bit at the end of our ropes, and it's only halfway through. We love living in Europe. But, this job is proving to be a bit (quite a bit) different than we expected.

(photo: I got my own copy of one of these today)

Slow paperwork. Unappreciative students. Absent teachers. Where's the challenge, the excitement, the "job well done!"? In some other country, obviously. In France, the challenge is to earn the respect of your peers and students, to energize a class of sixteen 16-year-olds who sit in class from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and are unaware that high school is anything other than a drudgery of tests and homework (where are the school sports teams, drama club, student government?).

The first month or two was exciting. We were the "new guy" that everybody was curious about at school. Students paid attention to us because they had to get used to our accents. Things may not have been perfect, but we had the promise of the months to come to look forward to.

But now we're halfway through. And things haven't gotten much better. Maybe you could say we're more "French," experiencing this lack of communication between ourselves and the teachers. Or simply that people around school have gotten used to seeing us (in particular, students), so we're not someone to care about anymore.

It could just be the mid-winter slump. After all, the Lyonnais don't know what to do with all the snow this year--buses have stopped running, so students have stopped coming to school and half the teachers have about given up; meanwhile, my Canadian friends are snickering at the sorry excuse for snow.

Who knows what it is. I don't have much hope of things improving; sadly, if I remind myself that I'm in a "secondary" position, where people mostly don't know what to do with me (as an assistant, and as an expat), then it's not so bad. And thanks to the new stamp on my passport, I can prove that I am tuberculosis-free :)

Snow Day

Watching kids making snowmen and a man trying to cross-country ski in the park in front of my building....while in a tank top, in the comfort of my well heated apartment :)

Christmas Trip Photos

Check out the photos from our trip!

They're out of order, but the order is: England, Barcelona, Paris, & Lyon.

Enjoy! :)

Fate

Some things just seem like fate. Today, after a trip to the bank yet again (this time to discover why my password to get onto my online account wasn't working), I decided to kill a few minutes before I could pick up the Christmas package from my mom at 5 p.m. (thanks, Mom!).

Walking down central Gratte Ciel minding my own business, I suddenly hear this scratchy, frail voice calling, "Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle! Pouvez-vous m'aider?" Can you help me, this cutest little old French lady, perched on a curb, was asking me with a huge, begging smile. She needed help off the curb, and down the street. "Mais bien sur!" But of course! I replied. Who could resist offering an arm to the petite-est old lady who was using a rolling shopping bag (see photo) as a cane? It turned out to be my best idea of the day. As we had a brief discussion about the weather and the United States, walking nearly 0.075 mph, this little French woman could actually understand my French, and she was so appreciative, that it gave me a huge confidence boost.


"Everyone here is so nice!" exclaimed little old French lady (in French, bien sur). "Every day, I walk outside to buy a newspaper or whatever, and someone always helps me get around," said she, who was clearly not fit to be out walking in the snow-laden streets (see other photo).

Little did little old French lady know, it was her bright nature, and her genuine interest in where I was from and what I was doing in Villeurbanne, that was the true blessing of the day.

After dropping off little old French lady on her doorstep and bidding her a "Bon Annee" (Happy New Year), I turned around and grinned--all the way home.

A California Girl In a Winter Wonderland

"I'm living in a postcard."

*To see more pictures of snow in my city, click here.

Blind Date

Finally home in Lyon :) Sorry for slacking on the blog posts lately. I spent the past 9 days in England, in the tiny, relaxing, Petalumaish (red brick buildings on a river) town of Reading, where I took full advantage of relaxation time (hence the blog slacking).

Though my family was celebrating Christmas 5,000 miles away in California, I was fortunate enough to spend the holiday with Nick and his family in England, where his dad will be working for the next month. Thank you, Benavides family! :-)

In this quaint town, we discovered the hole-in-the-wall-ishness of the Hobgoblin, a very cozy pub that's been around practically since Medieval times like everything else in this gray country, and also like most every place else in this gray country, it serves lots of good, local beer. 4,000 different types of beer to date, in fact. Think old, stained wooden tables. Corners with fireplaces. Lots of drunk middle-aged Englanders singing bad 80s songs to ring in the New Year. (see photo)

We took a couple days to do the usual sightseeing in London, as well: Westminister Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral...

But, the highlight of the trip quite possibly was a day at Warwick Castle, the best preserved medieval castle you can find (it was never attacked). We took a tour of the dungeons and torture chambers, where I happily had my innards extracted behind a curtain for our tour group :) After, Nick's Dad's work 'mate,' Sean, treated us to a fantastic Indian food dinner in Leamington Spa.

The flight home was fun. Six weeks prior to my trip, I apparently thought it a grand idea to book a 6:30 a.m. flight out of London Gatwick; it was the cheapest flight they had. What I didn't realize is that transportation from Reading at this time in the morning is impossible. Nick and I ended up paying for a hostel in London the night before and skipping sleep to take the 3:30 a.m. airport shuttle. Though Nick was flying out of Heathrow for California at 11 a.m., he came with me to Gatwick to spend a bit more time together. Of course, we had to split up on the bus to get seats, Nick stuck in a crowd of over-caffeinated Portuguese discussing something in loud voices around him, both of us drifting in and out of consciousness...

Lyon feels much smaller now that I've traveled. 'Went for a walk today, crossing the rivers and eating a panini in this French town I now strangely call my home. Everything is as I left it, though something seems to be missing. Returning "home," to a foreign country, alone, I realize how much I enjoyed introducing Nick to Europe and Europe to Nick. As far as I can tell, it's one of the best blind dates he's ever been on.