tough questions

The main discussion anywhere I go these days is about my year in France. People ask me when I'm going to tell them all about it. "Start with the blog," I recommend. Then I'll fill you in on the rest. I mean, how do I even begin to explain?

Last night, after working in my classroom for hours and making little progress, I had dinner at one of my student's house. His dad asked me, "What's the worst thing and the best thing about your year?" I'm not usually at a loss for words, but this time he had me. It's so hard to isolate particular events. And the new, laid-back me really doesn't see any one thing as terribly bad. Sure, the challenges of living in a rented house not really knowing who was in charge of it were frustrating (mailbox, plumbing issues, locked out, locked in) and the resident shrews had me pretty freaked out. But those were really minor, all things considered. Never ever, EVER, ever getting my residency permit ("But you have your blue récipissé, right?" Wrong!) was a bit weird (what would have happened if I just stayed? Is being a sans papiers that awful? Would they have shipped me home eventually, like they do the Eastern Europeans?). I think those two scenarios could be lumped into the "Dealing with Bureaucracy" category. Maybe that's the answer I was looking for.

But the BEST thing? I can't really come up with a response to that question. What did Charlie tell me to say at the alumni meeting in D.C.? "If my year in France were a film, it would win an Academy Award." That pretty much sums it up, don't you think?