Home, Sweet, Home!

Home

Sweet

Home

After 3 weeks out of the country, it felt pretty darn good to step off the plane in Minnesota. My flights back from Paris were all on time & went smoothly. Even my 7 hour layover in Iceland went pretty fast. When I arrived in Minneapolis, I had been up for 23 hours straight. By the time I got home, it was about 7 pm... I walked into my condo to find that it was 86 degrees... I hadn't ran my a/c while I was gone, so it had gotten mighty steamy... To make matters worse, I had left an onion in my cupboard, which under normal circumstances would have been fine, but when it was sitting in the heatbox that was my condo, it was not a good environment for a perishable good... I think next time I leave the country for an extended period of time, I'll be handing my keys over to someone & asking them to turn the a/c on a day or 2 before I get home... and then they would have had to dealy w/ the rotten onion situation.

So given the smell and temperature of my condo, I left immediately & went to my 'happy place'... aka Chipotle. It tasted amazingly good. I had some awesome food in France, but there is no replacement for Chipotle (in my opinion).

I've been back for about just over 72 hours, and the jet lag just started to set in this a.m. Hasn't been too bad, though, so I consider myself pretty lucky. It's been pretty easy to get back into the swing of things and it's actually nice to be back at work.

Since I left France I've had time to reflect back on the trip... It was an amazing time and I am so lucky that I was able to spend that much time over there. At the same time, I am very thankful to be back home. I used to sort of fantasize about having some really cool job that required me to live in Europe... well, after spending 3 weeks over there, I can tell you that it would not be my cup of tea. I love traveling & learning about new cultures, but I have realized that I am an American thru-and-thru & am not quite as 'flexible' as most 27 year olds might be? So I think this officially means that my roots are firmly planted in the US, and most likely are planted right here in the MSP area. So that will probably make mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and all the other relatives that live in the area & read this pretty happy....

So, as part of my final entry of this blog, I am going to summarize what I will & won't miss about my time in France... here goes...

What I Will Miss...

• Pain au Chocolat
• Crepes w/ Nutella & Bananas
• Living with Adrianne & having Elsa just down the hall
• Feeling like I had been transported back to my college years
• Sandwiches on crusty baguettes.

What I Won't Miss

• Multiplying everything by 1.6 to calculate the price in dollars...
• The smell of urine that you find around subway stations & any sort of sheltered area
• The whole money system in general. People hated when I used bills... then on my 2nd to last day, I paid for my 3.5 Euro purchase w/ a 20 Euro note (they actually let me) and the chick gave me 16 Euro's worth of coins. Seriously? Seriously.
• Only understanding about 10% of what people said to me... and feeling of isolation that resulted from the language barrier
• The French Culture's respect for time... or lack there of actually. If a prof shows up for class 15 minutes late, students enact the '15 minute rule' and leave. In France, if you aren't 10-15 minutes late, you are probably not French (the only teacher that was on time was the teacher who was from Austria)

And that concludes the France blog. I had a blast doing this blog, and as a result I will be doing another blog. Details will be forthcoming, but the central theme will probably be book reviews. I tend to read about a book a week so figure I might as well write up a little review and help readers out there know what books to check out & what to avoid. This will require enlisting the help of my creative friend, Brooke. Once I've capitalized on her talents, I'll send out my next blog address.

Until then, au revoir!