Blame The Weather

I have one major character flaw. Well, not just one, but I'm only going to talk about one right now. It's this: every time the weather changes, I miss Paris. Every time the seasons change, I miss Paris. Hell, every time I wake up in the morning, I miss Paris. It's like a disease of the mind. It sneaks up on me when I least expect it and suddenly all I can think about it -- you guessed it -- Paris. And now, as it slowly gets warmer out, I find myself in the same predicament I was in a few months ago when it snowed for the first time. I miss Paris.

When I was sixteen, I spent a month there studying film at the American University of Paris. I'm not sure how I couldn't have become obsessed with the city. I mean, give a sixteen year old a metro pass and access to one of the oldest and most amazing cities in the world, and what else do you expect? And being there for a month really let us explore the city and interact with the culture. We were there as students, not just tourists, so we got to do fun stuff like grocery shopping, riding the metro early in the morning, and taking our clothes to the laundromat. Not to mention, the rules set up to ensure no one went out by themselves were easily ducked, so I spent a good many afternoons wandering around alone.

I went back again for Spring Break my freshman year. I bought the ticket randomly two weeks before Spring Break started, and spent the week alone in the city. It was hard -- I mean, I was friggin' alone in Paris. How can it not be a little lonely? But all in all, it just reminded me why I love Paris more than any other place on Earth. It rained every day, except for my last one there. I spent the morning racing around like an idiot, taking pictures in front of monuments for my mom, but spent the afternoon walking around Montmartre. That evening, I watched the sunset in the Tuilleries, lounging in the grass. The next day, I had to leave, and let me tell you, nothing will reinforce how small the world really is more than waking up in Paris and going to sleep in Walnut that night.

And so, the sadness is back. The desire to ride the vaguely stinky Metro, to dodge traffic at Place de la Concorde, to hang around in Shakespeare & Co, to once again be tricked into trying a three cheese panini from a street vendor. The weather here would be beautiful over there today, coming up out of the Tour Maubourg Metro. There is this great little park right across from it, and you can see the top of the Eiffel Tower over the buildings. I guess I haven't really given up all hope of living there. It's too hard to let go of something you love that much.