Preparing for Re-Entry

I wrote once about what one does during a 10-day trip to the US.  With my approaching stateside, I've begun to try and mentally prepare myself for 10 weeks away from France in the US.  People ask me often what I want to eat while I'm home.  I realized recently, as I've been thinking through leaving and coming, that maybe what I want to eat isn't the right question.

Here are some thoughts.

This term was 31 months long.  In that time, I lived in Tunisia, then Besançon, then with a French family, then in Paris, then finally arrived to Marseille, where I also moved again into a different apartment after 8 months.  The Arab Spring happened.  My boss's wife almost died and then they later resigned and returned to America.  I got a new boss.  Several of my best friends have moved overseas and aren't in the US anymore.  My brother got married.  Three of our short-term interns came and have left again, making my life feel like it's just a series of goodbyes.  This term was 31 months long, and it was certainly long.  A year ago, when I decided to take my stateside break at this time, I didn't think I would need it yet...but now I am so ready for the break.  Two months ago, I said that I wasn't sure I'd be able to get back on the plane to come back to France come January.  By the grace of God, that is no longer true.  I'm ready for the break, and will enjoy the 10 weeks of mostly-rest, but I'm already looking forward to getting back in January to keep on with the awesome job I get to work here.

All that said...I don't think about American food much.  Someone asked me recently what restaurants I wanted to eat at while I'm home, and I couldn't even think of one answer.  (I finally found one: Five Guys Burgers and Fries.)  A week later, out of nowhere, I thought: Sunchips!  I want to eat Sunchips!

The thing is: I like cooking.  I enjoy eating out here in France, but it's all at local ma and pa shops where everything you order tastes unique and not streamlined and assembly-lined like franchise restaurants in the US.  So it might be, for awhile anyway, upon arrival, that I don't want to eat out a restaurant, but that I want to cook.

Someone was recently telling me about the movies she'd seen and enjoyed in the past few months, and I thought, "I've never even heard of a single one of those."  In fact, I haven't been to the movies since summer of 2011.  I am looking forward to going to the movies in the US, and having no sub-titles!, and seeing Les Miserables and The Hobbit.  How's that for you?  I leave France and look forward to seeing a cinematic version of the most famous French story in history.

Honestly, I don't know what I'm looking forward to (besides my family) in the US except to be out of France for a bit.  As much as I love those Frogs, I need just a little space.  Like when they send me a card telling me that my current foreigner's card (ie, visa), is ready to be picked up...but when I go to get it they tell me I have to wait until the old expires before they can give me the new one.  Or when the construction in front of my apartment starts at 6am and is a jackhammer directly below my living room window.  Or when stores are closed during business hours with no explanation for why or when they will be open again.  Or when homeless people sleep in my lobby.  Or when...oh well, you get the drift.

Here's one final example of French culture that I am ready to escape for a few weeks that you might enjoy:

When Pantene left, she had to close out her electricity (EDF) account.  After she'd closed the account, EDF sent a new bill for after they'd read the meter...and the bill was for 48 cents!  So we went to the post office, and purchased a 4.50euro money order to pay a 48 cent bill.  Yes, the woman at the post office laughed at us.

Vive la France!

So...in America, I want: no bureaucracy, no construction, no crazy people, no city noise, no couscous, no protests nor strikes.  I do want: Sunchips, to play miniature golf, to go to the movies, to read all the live long day, to hear rain and thunder, to enjoy the quiet of suburbia, to buy jeans that fit, to just relax for weeks on end.  I will probably: not know what someone is talking about more than once, accidently say French words often, not remember how to say something in English, mess up English idioms, get fed up with all the choices and thus decisions I'll have to make (which milk to buy? ack, I'm stressed just thinking about it), cry every single week at church (worship in English!), enjoy Christmas season a little too much, and marvel at TV commercials.

Two more weeks until the Big White Boat (BWB!)