I'm back! And, unfortunately, I'm sick. My prognosis was very grim at about 2 this morning, when leading medical experts (me) predicted imminent death. I'm feeling better, but still achy and cranky and logey and I'm anticipating that tomorrow might not be my most brilliant first day at work, but oh well.

The trip was fabulous! We went to Amsterdam, Paris and Provence. My broken French actually came in handy several times. I will definitely have to say more about the trip later -- my brain is so foggy right now, all I can think of is that I liked the Louvre a lot. Really, it's nice. You should check it out. I like that Mona Lisa chick. It's cool. Also, Provence was pretty and the olive groves were nice and we ate really good food. In fact maybe this whole illness is simply my body rejecting a non-French diet, demanding more red wine and cheese.

The French were generally very nice -- I do think they appreciate an effort to speak their language, however mangled. All those hours studying the bilingual cereal boxes here really paid off. I could not believe how many Americans just blasted off into complex English sentences without so much as a "parlay voo anglay?" (North Americans, I'll say generously, although probably they were all from the U.S., since Canadians are more used to handling those touchy French speakers with care.) I will say I appreciate living in a place where customer service is an actual concept and you're not expected to apologize to the shopkeeper for disturbing her day. But I guess that just shows what a high-maintenance North American I am. C'est la vie.

One thing that was very wierd that I discovered is that I do not have an understanding with French dogs. The dogs in Canada and the U.S., if I'm walking down the street, I give them a "good dog" look, they give me a little tail wag; we have an understanding. We are sympatico, I believe, though maybe that's just the fever talking. But les chiens francais, non -- I'd go in for a little walk-by pat on the head and they'd just avoid eye contact. Maybe les chiens are just a little more reserved than our American dogs, or maybe they're not used to being fawned over in the same fashion, or maybe it was just a language barrier. I must admit it was a bit disconcerting -- I was under the impression my Dr. Doolittle skills knew no boundaries. Luckily now I am reunited with Wonder Dog, who has requested and received an alias change to La Chien Gentille, and as always we are muy sympatico.

I'm off to investigate the medicinal effects of triple-creme brie now, a bientot....

In preparation for a rapidly approaching trip to Paris -- made sweeter by the aforementioned job offer and thus the knowledge of having a steady income stream when I return -- I have been reading Adam Gopnik's "Paris to the Moon," which is an excellent collection of essays on living in Paris and on being an American abroad generally. And even though I am overlakes rather than overseas, and the only language barrier I encounter is an over-reliance on the word "eh" and a predilection for inserting the letter u into words, I'm finding I relate to a lot of what he writes. It helps that he's a wonderful writer in that New Yorker style. (He and Malcolm Gladwell? Both Canadians, doncha know. Of course, both Canadians living in New York, now.)

There was a passage I particularly liked , which I'll reproduce here if I can find it, about how living in another country means not having any particularly strongly help opinions about the things most people feel strongly about. You listen to both sides of a debate and you think, well, they both have a point, which is exactly how I felt listening to all the debates during the last election here. The differences that seemed so glaring and fundamental to Canadians seemed rather slight to me, and it didn't matter much to me either way. And he writes a little about how this feels very free and refreshing, but after a while you get tired of it and it starts to feel a bit lonely, which I can see as well. As tired as I am of the whole red/blue conflict in the U.S., I could see how you would start to miss it after a while.

And reading his experiences with the bureaucracies of France, I realize we have it easy here in Canada even though I was pretty steamed that I have to pay $18 just to get my mail put on hold for three weeks. Yes, we have to pay the heavily-taxpayer-subsidized post office $18 -- plus provincial and federal sales tax, of course -- for the priviledge of them NOT delivering our mail. But still, it was a pretty simple transaction at least, so merci beaucoup for that. In a few phone calls to French restaurants to make reservations I have learned that my French is not up to French waiter standards, but I will continue trying because I took 10 years of French, dammit, and I ought to have something to show for it. Of course I dropped French immediately when I satisfied the language requirement in college, thinking, When will I ever live someplace where I'd need to know French? Little did I know, the places I'd go....

So this blog, updated at a pitiably slow pace as it is, will be on holiday for the next few weeks while I eat my way through France. If I do not exceed the weight limit on the flight back I will be back in September to report on the trip, and also my new job, which I'll start soon after I get back. Au revoir pour maintenant!