It's not easy becoming your future.

So my good friend Jen used to participate in a regular research expedition that involved strapping herself into an experimental airplane and launching herself into outer space.  Or almost, at least.  She even blogged about it once.  There was a lot of throwing up involved. Throwing up, and swearing on several graves never to do anything so irrational and uncomfortable again, all equalized (I think she'd agree) by a rush of euphoria.  The kind of euphoria that only comes from tottering around on unsteady legs, gloriously in tact despite having volunteered, completely unnecessarily, to sacrifice solid ground for the sake of experimentation.

This is roughly what my year in France has felt like.  

Somewhere in Holland, trying to watch the road and not the tulips 

(occasionally failing)

I've got a map and a yellow hi-lighter and when I trace out all the adventures I've had since I arrived last September it looks like a glow-worm had quadruplets and then the quadruplets each had quadruplets.   

I just got back from spending a week in the Alps near Italy with "family" who first gave me a home in France ten years ago.  I need to write about in on paper before I can blog about it on a screen, but to sum it up in six words or less:  Thibault grew up, but not too much.  

I fly back to Canada in less than a month.  It's hard to get a grip on that statement.  Back!  To Canada!  In less than a month!  You know how sometimes when you repeat a word over and over and over it starts to sound like nonsense?  Same goes for whole sentences.

Back.  To Canada.

Less than a month.