Paris Photobooth

Paris is every single bit as lovely and charming and awesome and all of these other superb adjectives as I expected it to be. However, for all the time I spend saying this, it seems like it might be a bit more productive to actually show it off. I seldom break out my amazing-but-clunky DSLR, […]

Read More

Moving: worst thing ever? or worst thing ever? Discuss.

Moving sucks. I could try to dress that up and put it more eloquently, but there’s just no way around the fact that the succinct version rings so incredibly true. I found a new place and today I sort-of-mostly moved. I still have another haul of crap and I’ll probably sleep in the old place […]

Read More

Eat it up (if you can)

“I lived in Ghana for a semester; Paris will be a breeze.” This is indicative of the simultaneously arrogant and naive things I thought before I came to Paris. When I left for Ghana, I had few expectations other than that everything was going to be really ridiculously different. In truth, things were probably nicer […]

Read More

VLOG: Parisian Apartment Diaries

And now for a vlog update. I present you with a few snippets of my apartment and an overview of the ambiguous terms under which I am being asked to leave this apartment. It’s all very French.

Read More

Get lost. It’s for your own good.

Getting lost is a given with travel. You can never really know a city until you have gotten hopelessly lost there. Depending on how adept you are with things like “directions” and “maps,” your formula for reaching that magical place where your number of times lost translates into having an actual sense of your city […]

Read More

It doesn’t matter if you make it awkward. It already is.

If you hate being uncomfortable and have little patience for the absurdly awkward, then travel and living abroad are simply not for you. Fortunately, I am well versed in all things awkward, and I mostly love the fact that every basic task becomes monumental now that I live in a city where my knowledge of […]

Read More

I am a debacle of an individual.

Real person or not, I can confidently say that I will always be a bit of a disaster on legs. My propensity for accidental shenanigans could be an art form. One week in, I have yet to reach “falling in a gutter” levels of epic-story-time but (a) that took two weeks -and- (b) this is […]

Read More

Oh shit, I’m really in Paris.

I have not forgotten the promised vlog. I attempted to record it three times, but I am so jetlagged and haggard looking it is ridiculous. Mostly it’s a lot of me staring at the camera saying, “Uhhhhh.” Suffice it to say that a lot has happened in the last couple weeks. Waiting to depart my […]

Read More

Once upon a time I learned to play nice with the other children.

I could not have asked for a better send-off from the US. I leave for France in three days and in addition to the flurry of excitement surrounding my departure prep, I am still reeling from how fantastic my weekend was. In my year of basement-dwelling, teaching, and becoming a gym rat, I have never […]

Read More

Hey, Future Self. A few things…

Dear Myself c. 2030, How are things? By now you have probably gotten over your aversion to anything that feels like settling down. You’re probably married and have children and are living in a home somewhere in the US and not gallivanting about the globe like you used to think you always would. No judgment […]

Read More