Tou-louse, I win

A helpful way to imagine my life right now is to think of the Nice apartment as the home beehive, and Gretchen, Ian, and me as the worker bees. Although I'm far from working, the metaphor is meant to portray the passage of time as "in again, out again, etc." I came, Gretchen left for Japan. Gretchen and Ian return, I go to Geneva. We spend a rare day together then I go to Toulouse. Gretchen and Ian leave for England, and I return to an empty hive. They return only to have Ian leave shortly after on a business trip. Gretchen and I are in Paris right now, having crossed paths with Ian for a moment in Charles de Gaulle on his way back to Nice. Have whiplash yet?

Traveling is so easy with ample public transportation and Nice being close to so many other countries. I guess one could say the same of almost every other country in Europe.

In Toulouse I stayed with Justine Brault (for the weekend of course ;), a friend with whom I share many different familial connections. The food at the Braults is indescribable; an example might be madeleines for breakfast, lamb for lunch, guinea fowl for dinner, and flan for dessert. It definitely pays to have friends in many places. I know it'd probably become rude at some point, but one could travel around Europe for years like this, making more connections that open doors to travel all over the place on a budget.

I was also able to meet up with an old French exchange student Amalia, and the current student from WUHS studying abroad in Saint Gaudens as well as her correspondent for lunch. I'll also be staying with Amalia's grandparents in Finland at the end of my trip :) It was great to catch up with all three of them, and the fact that we can all get together on a whim like that, having grown up in different places but still have so much to talk about is the beauty of this generation.

And again, after a seven hour scenic train ride along the beautiful French Riviera, I was happy to return to the apartment in Nice. On Tuesday Gretchen and I fly back to begin Thanksgiving preparations for a full table on Friday!

À la prochaine!

#main