The Remedy for Homesickness

2 months isn't a long time away from home at all. I've seen worse. George has been living away from his family for nearly 5 years now, alone. Meg's still off on her European ventures and it's been a year (seems like forever). Joseph was banished from Jacob for what, 30 something years? Comparatively, my two months could be someone's dream for like. . . 30 minutes. (Yes, I'm still thinking about that film.)

Yet, from time to time the little American in me screams out for nourishment and attention. As if being in Paris meant being over bombarded by culture, and cynicism, and foreign things (but not foreign enough to be entirely foreign, y'know what I'm saying?) It is precisely on these days that I do the most horrid things --

Yep, I went to "Macdo" and bought McFlurry.
Don't you judge me. It was hot, and I was craving it.

This is George judging me.

I talked to Chicco about the stereotype of the lazy Parisian yesterday.
I actually argued against it, but now I'm not so sure.
Really, I have to flurr my own McFlurry? What the hell.

It was like 90 degrees outside and you don't have air conditioning within your restaurant, AND you want me to flurr my own McFlurry? You bastards.

AND you don't have Reeses pieces --
just some nasty...
liquidy...
chocolate....
syrup.

Unsatisfied, I decided to head to Poîlane, a bakery that David Lebovitz recommended in his book nearby. It was there that the American within me retreated and headed for the hills, because she felt threatened by the more obnoxious Americans who were present as well, no doubt on account of some "Top 10 in Paris" tourguide they bought at Borders for $4.98. The woman wanted to buy a bread knife at the bakery with the bakery's name on it (okay, why?) and she had picked up a lefty knife. Unfortunately when the French woman with the lazy eye told her that it was a left-handed knife in French, the American stared at her crazily as though she were speaking in a neanderthal dialect. When she finally understood, she shouted at the top of her lungs, "OH. OH, BUT I'M RIGHT. RIGHT HANDED. RIGHT." As the French woman recoiled to protect her already torn eardrum, she scurried to find a right handed knife.

After all that, the American went to the caisse to pay. As though in an attempt to reassure the French woman that she did in fact speak French, she screamed in her horrid accent,
"OH! IL FAIT CHAUD!"

I wanted to hide.

But, before I did, I bought an apple ... pastry thing, that was flaky and yummy and warm.

And we hung out at the jardin de luxembourg

Watched old people play petanque.

Perhaps the American in me will continue to rebel, but in the end it's always fun to do it the French way.