...It will finally hit me that I'm leaving to spend 5 weeks in my favorite place in the world.
I visited Paris once when I was 16 years old. I found a job at a small pizza joint...one of the only places that would hire a 15-year-old, and I assembled hoagies and deep-fried mozzarella sticks 5 days a week for a year until I saved enough to go on the trip. It was organized through two teachers at my high school and 20 other students from my class attended the week-long trip to Rome and Paris.
Rome was an incredible city...full of beauty and life (oh.. and amazing gelato). As incredible as Rome was, it didn't resonate with me the way Paris did. When I stepped off the train at la gare, I immediately fell in love. Not the fickle kind of love that is overwhelmed with initial awe and passion and then later fizzles out... it was the kind of love that I knew would resonate with me for a lifetime.
Paris is truly magical - it's the clinking of the glasses as you walk past endless street cafes where the sidewalks are lined with the most sophisticated creatures sipping their cafes over their favorite vintage novels written by some of the greats...Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's the smell of fresh pastries wafting in the air as you cross a bridge cluttered with ragged artists who spend their lives creating masterpieces as an ode to the masterpiece of a city they dwell in. It's the hundreds of people having picnics beneath the Eiffel Tower equipped with a cheap bottle of wine, the perfectly baked baguette and good company to share it with. It's walking down the cobblestone streets on a rainy day and feeling more alive than you have ever felt in a lifetime.
I only spent three days in Paris on my last trip. I vowed to myself I would find a way back someday and five years later, I finally have. I am flying out on Monday... four days earlier than the rest of the students in the program. Call me selfish, but I wanted to have some one-on-one time with the city that stole my heart years ago. I'm nervous, excited, anxious and restless knowing that I will be leaving in approximately 48 hours. In a way... I feel like I'm finally going home.
In the words of Gertrude Stein, "America is my country and Paris is my hometown."
Au revoir mes amis... vous voyez à Paris!
