Here's to Waking Up Old and Responsible...

Yeah, so catching up on the events of over six months ago is hopeless at this point. But now I'm on summer break and I have time to at least put something up here - which is to say I have yet to find a job and have a lot of free time on my hands. So, I went to Dublin in October, I spent five glorious days there, I stayed in a hostel (Jacob's in fact, quite a good place, and cheap too - with a sauna and everything), I met a gorgeous guy named Fabio (no, really, I actually did), I danced to bad American music in various pubs, I took way too many pictures to put up here, I went out on Halloween, I got poured on and destroyed an umbrella in Wicklow, I went to the Dublin Writer's Museum, I got to see an excellent exhibit of Edvard Munch's prints (for 3 euro!), and on my last night I slept in the Dublin airport to save a day of hostel fees. An excellent adventure, and I can't wait to go back.

Also, on December 18th, I inevitably left Paris for good. During my last week I went to as many museums as I could, some of which were adversely affected by the museum guard strike going on at the time, and many of which were free. In fact, I had my very first experience of Parisian rudeness the week I was about to leave: I went to the Palais de Tokyo, a lovely modern sculpture museum, most of which was roped off "because of remodeling" or some such excuse (you would think Paris would be proud of its striking reputation by now...). I had gone to see an exhibit called "Chasing Napoleon," which included, among other things, a terrifyingly accurate life-sized model of Ted Kazynski's cabin in the woods, and some horrible little frozen room you could sit in while alarming lights and machinery (which you could not touch, or you were responsible for your own injuries) made startling sounds - really a lovely afternoon. In any case, on my way in I asked the desk attendant (in what I thought was rather good French) for one ticket to the exhibit. She proceeded to try to sell me a magazine about all the exhibits for that season, which I did not want of course, and seemed to think I was awfully stupid when I insisted that I wanted a ticket and asked me in loud, ticked-off English "DO YOU EVEN SPEAK FRENCH?!" When I admitted only "un petit peu" she declared "WELL THEN LET'S JUST DO THIS IN ENGLISH." Fine send-off from the city, right? At least it was a neat exhibit.

BUT I did leave Paris and then spend the first week or so at home in a state of disbelief, then spend my first month or so back at Skidmore explaining that, no, I had not just become a recluse during the fall semester, I was in fact in another country. Lovely semester on the whole though, and a gorgeous spring break. But then, suddenly, it was finals week, and I found myself with only one final exam (on the Monday of the week, at that), and then I found myself moving out of Howe 223 and back to my old room in Connecticut. Time does fly.

And now, as of 8:45 pm on May 25th, I find myself twenty years old. Twenty years old. Still getting used to that one. Lots of pressure, you know? The twenties. They're supposed to be the BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE. That's really a lot to live up to. But hey, I have ten of them after all. More alarmingly, I'm realizing that I will return to Skidmore as a junior - an upper-classman. Now that's frightening. It seems like about a week ago I was a junior in high school. But that is a train of thought I am trying desperately hard not to follow out. And to make it even more surreal, I've been working a bit at my old elementary school, Oak Grove Montessori. Easily the most pleasant job I could ask for, but I graduated from there eight years ago. And now I'm there with actual authority! How very adult of me. So I suppose I did wake up "old and responsible" on my twentieth - let's see if I can keep this up. Maybe by sort of maintaining my blog? Only time will tell, I suppose. In any case, here is a memento from the nicest evening-before-birthday ever.


Thank you baby :)

Until next time, au revoir. (Oh yes, relish that delicious redundancy)