sort of the last day

For the last time, I sit in my apartment and look out the window at the Eiffel Tower doing its Christmas-tree impression. The perishable food is thrown out (I visibly cringed when the Camembert went in the garbage). My clothes are rolled and in the suitcase. My shot glasses—one from each country I visited—are nestled securely in the pockets of my thickest coat.

I’m not done, though. I have more blogs to write.

There’s the one about museums and the people who frequent them: the lingerer, the checklist aficionada, the person who needs to use the toilette (say it in French; it sounds prettier), and the photographer despite the huge sign with the red X over a camera. And I still haven’t decided if shaving one’s legs once in three months is a character flaw or an adaptation to another culture (I can’t even write that with a straight face). What about my on-again-off-again affair with the Metro? Stairs? Cheese? Loire Valley? Visitors? I’ll stop now.

The point is that just because I’m going back to California doesn’t mean I’m done with Paris. My plan—and I wouldn’t be me without a plan—is to write one blog a week until I run out of things to say or my fall semester begins, whichever comes first. This experience has been too big for it to end, at least for now.

So I will cheerfully indulge myself for a bit longer, and if I knew a cool, pithy French phrase, I would insert it here. Yet another topic to blog about.

After ten minutes and mucho stairs, voila (going to miss that).