Mother Hen

"Kelsey, this new soap smells like shampoo."
"..."
"Kelsey, did you and Rachel put shampoo in the soap bottle while I was gone?"
"..."
"Kelsey, why did you and Rachel put shampoo in the hand soap bottle?"
"Well we didn't know where you kept the soap!"

I wouldn't say that it's "good" to be back, because while I lugged six or seven books around France, none of them were read because they were all "mandatory" and thus, "boring". I am now using the jet-laggedness that I thought I had sneakily avoided for productivity and paper-writing. And soap-filling and fridge-cleaning and milk-smelling because it appears that some of my roommates have forgotten how to live civilized lives.

Currently taking advice on how to confront one roommate about her dating habits and how she's not allowed to bring DudeBro over here not because of his backwards hat, but because we do not support cheating and other-woman-habits in this living space. And maybe also because of his backwards hat.

After School Special

This terminal of the Charles de Gaulle airport is shaped sort of like what I imagine Noah's Ark was like. Except two fewer giraffes. Although I did find out what a giraffe is in France, and I like it almost as much as I like giraffes the giraffes. What's that? This post is seemingly random thoughts strung together by an excuse for punctuation? Oh. Right. Lack of sleep is kicking in.

I've been traveling Han Solo for somewhere around 15 hours now. There were trains, there were connections, there were transfers. There was French I did not understand, there were made up hotels that I'm sure translate to "Hotel Shady" directly, and there were bus rides. Angry French people mocked me, some nice French people helped me, and one French person offered me a tiny wheel chair to sleep in at the airport- for which I was grateful.
So. Here I sit. In the Ark. Waiting to board my plane to Detroit in...3 hours. I've decided that there is a whole lot of waiting in the traveling experience. And while I'm not a particularly patient person, I've learned from this adventure that I don't mind waiting in this situation. Waiting means that I am in transit from point A to point B, or now, point T to point U (time passed in the thought process of what comes after U). I like the waiting because it means that I am not crying to a stranger who speaks a different language than me. Crying while waiting on public modes of transportation is mostly okay, crying on the borrowed phone at a hotel who doesn't recognize my confirmation number is harder.
Traveling alone falls in the same category as packing, public speaking, important conversations, and seeing someone for the first time in a long time. General, unadulterated stress. Often requiring medication or tears or, as in this adventure, both. I wish I had come up with an answer last night when Jacob gently asked me what about situations like this make me cry uncontrollably, but I was without explination. It's not like I think I'll never get home. I'm actually 100% certain that I'll get home. Or at least...90% certain.
But even when I've bent further than I thought my breaking point ever was, I would gladly get on the same planes for the same long flights, even the hotel confusion and night at the airport to do this adventure again. I guess that's the thing about fear, no matter how scary it is, most speeches go well, important conversations are ones that are crucial and seeing someone for the first time in a long time is usually not horrible, but a massive relief. Because let's face it, some of these tears are for the anxiety, but most are because I'm leaving this place.
So, here's to being brave. Because maybe that's what I do now. I will cheers you with my Orangina and chocolate French cookies that I have re-named "Tummy Ache Cookies" and we will enjoy my airport breakfast together.

My Taylor Sweater is the perfect warmth.

I would describe the weather here as relatively comparable to the weather at home, except...better.  When they say "fair" and "partly cloudy" here, they really mean "sunny" and 54 degrees seems to be an underestimate or possibly in Celsius...I never was good at that conversion.   In St. Paul, "54 and partly cloudy" typically means "40 degrees and you can sometimes see evidence of a blue sky in the small holes between the clouds.  Also, probably anticipate frozen rain and smelly, post-snow ground".  

I've spent a fair amount of time outside because of this warm front, even though Jacob insists that he is "disappointed that the weather isn't nicer".  Friday was spent on the beach getting sand into every page of my book and body and watching beachlike sports.  The weekend mostly involved cooking and consuming various foodstuffs and convincing certain parties that Gossip Girl is a worth while show and was importantly the 2nd thing I packed before leaving (1st: my broken watch that I brought to France to be fixed instead of walking the 2 blocks to the crotchety old man in Highland Park).  

Other highlights include:

1.  The current smell of the banana bread cooking in the oven.  Resisting urge to see if it's done...again. 
2. French Mass. Still comforting, still don't know the Apostle's (Nicene? Damnit!) Creed without the entire congregation backing me up. 
3. First Limoncello experience.  To be followed by more Limoncello experiences. 
4. Bisous.  I'm still struggling to figure out when they're appropriate, but it's turning into less weird and more fun. 

Trying to remember that bisous are totally normal. Personal space, mershonal shpace.

Salut! 

I hear that's French for...something.  And in the ten days or so that I'm hanging out in Western France, the least I can do is figure out how to greet people when I walk into a room.  They think I'm awkward because I would speak negative French if that were possible, but they've only just met me and don't know that's my natural state.  In due time, Frenchies. 

I'm currently sitting at a big wooden desk using a computer that has almost entirely Frenched Blogspot and has degrees in celcius.  I came back from a walk this morning with half a warm baguette in hand and walked into the house that I'm staying in to middle age woman who seems out of place in this here student house (Read discription here, as written accurately by my host).  I'm walking in alone, without my transla-erh...Jacob and am instantly vulnerable.  She mumbles what is likely yet another greeting I don't know and I say something mousily (?) under my breath that I hope sounds greeting-ish.  It appears that she is cleaning, so I scamper into a room and rip pieces off of my baguette and catch the interwebs up with my adventure, trying to gague where Middle Age is in the house, and if that place is the bathroom because I can't hold it a lot longer. 

Ahhnnyway.  France (first typed: Franch. That could totally be a grossnasty salad dressing) is fantastic.  After a solid 345309 of traveling, Jacob and I spent yesterday in Nantes walking around in the sun and drooling over H&M finds and small, well dressed children.  My flight times were on my side for the time change, so assuming I stay awake for the next two hours, there is a beach with my name on it.  

More later, nothing motivates increased posting like international adventures! 

New Vocabulary

I spend most of my time wishing I had gone to college further away from home than I do. Like, in Holland or Romania. Or one of the poles. But okay, I guess sometimes it's nice to be able to come home for a little lovin' when you get homesick 20 minutes away. Or when three of your four roommates have the flu. Or when you want a small terrier to cuddle with you on the couch. Or when you're out of quarters, detergent, dryer sheets and underwear.
I came home tonight for all of the above reasons, plus to see the most recent face lift on the house. It's an adventure every time I come home now, but most recently, I've decided that if someone dropped me blindfolded in any room of the house I grew up in, it is likely I wouldn't recognize my surroundings. I'm sitting in my bedroom right now and the sound of my fingers slapping the keys is echoing off my shiny new wood floors. Which, apparently, were hiding under the grass green shag carpet I had for 20 years. My mother told me someone offered to buy my bedroom set. I didn't really know I had a bedroom set. There's new carpet running around most of the house, a type called, "berber" which, to me, is only a funny word. I found new furniture in the room that I think is called the living room, but it's now one of those living rooms that you don't really live in because the furniture is much too fancy for humans. I think there is leather in there, but I've been too afraid to actually sit on it and see.
So, yes, it's nice to be home. It is home because it has the same rickety old mailbox and now fancy, but still scary basement whose steps I still must run up. And the snoring. Snoring definitely makes a house a home.