Sunday, May 07, 2006

the switch


It is hard to believe that I have been here for three months already.

Before I left I had a running list of things that needed to happen before I left for Paris. Pick up shampoo, fill prescriptions, buy luggage locks, get a shirt drycleaned, see certain people, have one last X,Y,Z.

Shortly before I left, my friend/mentor/former professor, John laughed at me saying- "You know. . . they have stores in France, if you don't get something done, you can probably get it there."




Today I was walking home from the gym eating a very nutritious crepe and an Orangina purchased from a street vendor and I started thinking about what needed to happen before I left for home.

Maybe it was because I was doing something that has grown to become quite routine and realized that I wasn't even thinking twice about it. Buying a crepe 4 months ago would have been reserved strictly for a carnival dessert or a Sunday morning breakfast in bed type day. Crepes and Orangina is now as familiar a routine as stepping through the haze of smokers gathered outside the gym door. The routine is indicative of the switch from seeing there as home to here as home. Yet as soon as I put that into writing, I realize what a horribly correct and incorrect statement that is all at the same moment. Crepes are comfortable yes, but not 'home.'

With one month left here, I have realized how much needs to happen. School work yes, but also life work. The list isn't as simple as shampoo this time and I know that there are no stores in the US selling cheap fixes to the life lessons I am still in process of learning.

2 things concern me about my thoughts today
1. I can make crepes at home, but I don't think there is Orangina. That piece of France, might have to stay in France as it turns out that stores in the US don't stock life lessons or Orangina.
2. Why do people smoke right outside the gym, and why is there a crepe stand across the street? People?!?!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you can get orangina at byerly's:)

pip said...

yay! byerly's!