That's it. The semester in Paris is over. And everyone has gone home except me. Did you know that the city of lights gets lonely? It does. Here's what happened:
Over the course of this semester Paris stopped being a dream and became a reality. Like a picture just slightly out of focus, the edges slowly sharpened, secrets slowly reveald themselves and the city became a part of me, and I a part of it. But in this exchange, there were 6(plus many) other very important people who left their marks on me on Paris and on each other, and now ven the city of my dreams seems lonely without them.
I love Paris, I always will. And as much as it will tear me apart to leave this place in two days, all I want right now is to be home for Christmas.
Read that again.
I didn't think it was possible to want to be anywhere else in the world, because it always seemed that everything I desired was somehow wrapped up in Paris. I used to tell myself that everything would be parfait as soon as I could get here. And now that I am here, and have lived here for the last five months, I realize that life is close to perfect, but that for me, right now, it is waiting on the other side of the ocean.
Still it feels strange to go, to know that my bags are already packed and that soon, I'll wake up far from the boulangerie on the corner, far from Mass at Notre Dame, far from my Saturdays in the Jardin de Luxembourg, far from ma famille D'Antin. I can't really pin it down in words.
My plane leaves in 64 hours.
See you on the other side.
A bientot.
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