Reunited and it feels so good

Miracle of miracles! I have emerged from the mountain of cardboard boxes I had unceremoniously crammed full of pens and pillows and books and kitchen pots and tossed into storage in August. I have almost discovered all the places my subletter hid cooking ingredients and Tupperware. A Comcast technician named Flavio with diamond studs and a Hahvahd Yahd accent has restored my lifeline to you, and I am back, baby.

Yesterday, Jess, Christine and I arranged for a post-mortem on our return to the States and had agreed to meet at Second Cup, a café near my apartment. Upon arriving, we discovered that Second Cup, a respectable coffeehouse, is now home to “Pizza Days,” yet another classy joint in the college slum neighborhood we all know and kind of love. Zap, a new restaurant claiming to serve “European cuisine” was nestled right next door. Knowing that no self-respecting European would ever name anything “Zap,” we kept walking.

I realize it’s been quite a long time since my Christmas Eve feast in the 10^th, and like any other expat returning to the land of chili dogs and the Fourth of July, the reintegration has been jarring. Not only do I feel compelled to tap my Metro card on the T, which suddenly resembles a small toy train bumbling around a small toy track, but my belief that finally speaking English on a daily basis would make life easier was way off base. In a feeble attempt to print out some pictures at Kinko’s the other day, a clerk brusquely asked me what I was looking for. It took me only 5,346 minutes to explain myself, while my brain sputtered around like a dying car, wondering why he wasn’t asking me which kind of baguette I would like, and then finally spit out a very French “euuhhhh” conversation-stalling sound. The clerk was not amused.

As I am now fording the waters of unemployment, Oregon-Trail style, in the fragile period between the completion of college and the rest of life, the lazy lunch breaks and rosy glasses of kir haunt me frequently. I also seem to curiously resemble an alcoholic, since wine is of course the beverage of Satan in the States, and only acceptable on special occasions. Obvious comparisons aside, it is nice to be back in a place where strikes are something far away in the Midwest that you read about every once in awhile, and grocery shopping doesn’t involve watching a Franprix checker blatantly ignore you and then hand you two handfuls of 20 centime pieces as change.

I am in the process of jotting down an entry or two for Spain, as well as simultaneously negotiating my return to The Shipyard and carpet-bombing all of Boston with my resumé, but in the meantime, I felt I should check in and make sure you all survived the holiday season.

Fingers crossed my oxen don’t drown crossing the river and no one in the wagon gets cholera. Now if only I could stop making that “euuhhh” sound.