The adventure has just begun

Blogger’s note: Due to a combination of laziness and writer’s block I agonized over how to write my final “farewell to France” blog entry. In the end I said screw it and gave myself ten minutes to write whatever came to my mind. Stay tuned for retrospective blog entries, stuff I wrote there but never posted and chronicles of the becoming-an-au-pair process. Bizoux!

For the first time in a long time, the sun burned my skin today. Emilia is in Arizona. Tempe, to be precise. It was a long, arduous journey back from France. But it would’ve been a harder one if I hadn’t known I was going back.

I’m going back to France, most likely Paris, in September to be an au pair. I’m going to be a college graduate making my living babysitting in a country where I’m basically an idiot linguistically. And I’m totally cool with that.

I talked to a friend today who is considering studying abroad … I didn’t even have to think about what to say to her, other than how to best phrase the thought “You absolutely must, must, must go.” She was having the same reservations as I did, money and whether taking a semester abroad would somehow hinder my professional aspirations. What I have learned is that I gained an experience that, while it doesn’t fit on a resume, has been a greater builder of my humanity than anything else on that 8 ½ by 11. And oddly enough, being a human is far more important in searching for a job than being a robot that can show up on time and do the work.

But enough career advice. I’m back from France and now I’m not quite sure what to do with this blog. Its very name is now a lie … but I think such liberties are OK in creative non-fiction. I wanted to kick myself today (really hard) because it dawned on me I should’ve spent ten minutes of every day in France writing about it. Those ten-minute scrawls would’ve given birth to at least three times as much what I actually did write. I guess I’m learning from my mistakes. But have no fear; I’m going back to France so the title will be true once again.

But what to do with this blog, now? I won’t change it to “Emilia in Prescott” … and I don’t think I want to stop writing altogether. I guess we are going to find out how much of France is still in me. If you don’t want to read what I have to say about Europe when I’m not actually there, I’ll understand. But I’ll be writing anyway. And I’ll be glad to hear what you think. And I’ll be even happier to have you rejoin me in the fall when I take the plunge once again.