The Next Chapter

I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, as there’s been a whole lot going on. First, dear friends from L.A. were in town. Next, I spent a week in Tuscany for the wedding of SF friends. It was heavenly. Finally, and most importantly, my mind has been elsewhere as I’m moving back to the States in 10 days. It’s bittersweet, but mostly sweet. I miss my community, my homeland, and many efficiencies/conveniences that I always took for granted. There will be a lot to miss (plus a lot to not miss!) in France, and at the end of the day I spent 14 very enriching, opening, lovely months here. It’s comforting knowing that I can now call Paris home and that I’ll definitely be back to visit, as N’s extended family and our new friends are here.

In the coming days I’ll certainly slap together some reflections on my time in France, a.k.a. the good, the bad, and the smelly, but today I’m musing about the future of this here blog. What started as a means to keep friends and family updated on my life in Paris took on a life of its own as the nature of it evolved and the readership grew. The blog has provided a new medium for a lifelong passion and has been a cathartic tool for processing my impressions of what can at times be a strange and alienating culture. Plus, as my FIL poignantly noted recently, it’s been a file conducteur (connecting thread) in my life abroad, a kind of stabilizing element that carried through the less certain early months when I didn’t speak much French and thus benefited from creating a sort of dialogue with myself, and continued through the fullness of the latter months when my local network had expanded and my understanding of the culture had become sharper and more multi-dimensional.

And so, one of my preoccupations about Great Move Back has been deciding how the blog will evolve. I’ve got ideas. I, unlike Sarah Palin, do not read “all” news sources, but in the ones I do tend to read I think I noticed something about, like, $700 billion and some guys (and one lady) running for some sort of political office. It’s not at all an interesting time to move back to the States, armed with reverse culture shock and new bi-continental perspective on home to boot. So stick with me—if you dare!