Some of the other students at my residence and I have dinner together practically every night in the common kitchen. Everyone brings their own dinner and we talk for an hour or so about the day or our native countries, and inevitably plans are made. A pancake breakfast followed by a picnic at the park where we were annihilated with pantry staples during orientation week. Mass at the 801 year old cathedral. A week-long road trip around France.
I know I shouldn't wish to get used to this, that I should wander around for the next two years in a constant state of amazement and wonder. But I am getting used to it, and that too feels kind of nice. I'm not going to separate my life into wonderful bits and monotony.
For years, I wanted nothing more than to leave Southern California for the rest of the world. But when I watch people's eyes light up when I tell them where I'm from, images of the happiest and glitziest and sunniest place on the planet projected upon their minds, it occurs to me that ultimately, these dream destinations are just pieces of land that have grown abstract over the course of human civilization.
Waxing pseudo-philosophical, I know. I just mean that sure, France is France, with its romantic bready cheesy baggage. And how wonderful it is that I get to live here like it's not all of that, like it's just another place - another collection of dirt and plants and rock and humans and animals and insects - on a mass of rock and lava spinning in an edgeless vacuum.
