One Week

It's hard to believe that this time next week I'll be back in Canada. I don't know if I'm getting better at leaving a place or just realizing how to deal with leaving a place. I'm feeling strange lately. I don't know when I'll be back here next. I don't know if it will ever be possible for me to live here again. I don't even know if I'd want to live here again. I often think that it's probably best to move forward to new places, to make different memories and have moments I haven't yet experienced. However, I often think about Korea and how great it would be to go back there. And then I think about the next time I can live here. Maybe I'd live in a different city. Or maybe. maybe...I think I know that it's best to go when things are going well.

It's time to go back home. It's time to give Canada a chance. It's time to find a real job where I grew up. It may sound strange, but this is way scarier than going to Europe or Asia. There are no excuses why I don't understand something, or why I behave a certain way, or why I look the way I do. I can't just say "I'm Canadian" and have it all make sense. I have to try to make things work at home and that can be terrifying. At the same time, I'm excited. It's going to be awesome to see my family everyday and be a part of their lives. I'm going to be able to call up my friends from a cell phone (not skype) I'm going to be able to see their babies grow up! I'm going to get organized!!! (I feel like I haven't been organized in years.) Good things are going to come from this. I don't know what job I'm going to find, or even what field I'll be in, but I have faith that it's all going to come together.

So I've been soaking in everything I can before I leave. The smell of the boulangerie that I pass each day on the way to work. The look of the sun setting on the Seine just past the Pont des Arts. The buzz of the metro before snapping it's doors shut. The way the Eiffel Tower sparkles for the first 10 minutes on the hour after dusk. I've been eating like I'll never taste this food again. Brie and tarte aux framboise and baguettes and mille feuille and café crème and chèvre and macarons and champagne and crème brulée and boeuf bourginon and and and. I'm trying to record every voice, the correct way to pronounce each word that I have troubles with, to remember the cute things the girls I teach say to me. It's sad to leave a place that you've come to know as a home. It's really hard for me to explain just exactly what it is about this place that makes me so crazy for it. Maybe I'll write about all the things I HATE about this place to make it a little less depressing to leave. I'll save that for later.