paris, the city of...culture shock?

Paris and I have had a rough relationship.

It started almost 4 weeks ago. Of course, it was love at first sight. "Everyone speaks French!" I thought, "How charming!" The food was amazing! The strange way the toilets flushed was so quaint! The Metro was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my entire life! EVERYTHING was unimaginably BEAUTIFUL!! The Eiffel Tower was the EPITOME OF BEAUTY AND JOY!!!!!

Then about two weeks into it, things started to wind down. WHY did EVERYONE have to SPEAK FRENCH ALL THE TIME? WHY was there NO NORMAL CHEESE? WHY did the Metro smell like eggs and flatulence? WHAT HAPPENED TO CHEMICALLY ALTERED FOODS AND TRANS FATS?

Em and I lived our lives out of a dull sense of obligation. "look. something else really old," I would say. "yeah. cool," Em would respond. "want to see the Eiffel Tower tonight?"

"Not really. I'm tired. I don't get what the big deal is anyways. It is like a building, whatever."

"Yeah," she'd agree.

I wanted to break up with Paris for a little while. I wondered why I'd come, why I had left the land of warmth, the ability to drive cars or walk for five minutes without getting totally lost and accosted by Tunisian strangers, and Wendy's.

Luckily, I stuck it through, mostly because I'd paid Paris several thousand dollars already. And sunshine, unicorns and rainbows, hurray!! Today we were AMAZED! We were actually INTERESTED! Old things actually WERE cool! We were in Paris, hurray! We went shopping, we laughed, we even bought and ate our own French cheese. It was an epic moment for us.

Moral of the story: whatever you are dating, when, after a few weeks, the beauty and joy wears off and you desperately want to run back to a land where people speak the same language as you, stick it out. It is worth it.

Well, maybe not if you're dating, like, Cheyenne Wyoming. Then you should probably just break it off right away.

Love,

Lizzy ;)