Et voici.

It has been eight and a half years of living in Paris. 9 apartments in 6 arrondissements on 13 metro lines. 5 bands, 1 long relationship and a handful of good friends. In 1 month I’ll travel the 5566 miles (or 8958 km) back to San Francisco, 2/3 reticent and 98% nostalgic.

I moved to Paris with the intention of staying a year or so, getting in touch with my paternal French roots (from the South, spanning from the mountains behind Nice to the Southwest city of Tarbes where my father spent most of his youth), and seeing what the country, and the city, had to offer. I had never been to Paris before moving here in 2003. I really had no idea what I was getting in for.

Paris is a wonderful city. Full of history and architecture and art and berets and baguettes and croissants and people gesturing and whistling and scoffing and loving and snorting. They call it a Museum City, not for the Louvre, but for the slowness to change. "Things have been good since we got rid of the king and worked out that indoor plumbing thing, why shake them up?" This is the stuff of frustration, but also something that holds genuine appeal for a girl from the Far West, where a building gets a plaque for being older than the 1920s.

So, I’ve lived here a while. I’ve eaten a lot of crèpes and snails. I’ve sunburned in the Luxembourg gardens and fantasized about jumping into the Seine to fill my ears and nose and pores with Paris. I’ve jogged the canal and the Tuileries gardens and speed-ridden my bike through the heat, the rain, and the streetlamped night, sometimes fuzzy with wine, sometimes just late to teach a class. I’ve poured beers in jazz bars and sung with Big Bands, fought in public and made out (mostly) in private. I’ve been up the tower and down the catacombs, taken planes from all the airports and trains from almost all the stations (except Bercy, I mean, who ever leaves from Bercy?).

I’ve been transient forever here. Just around the corner from moving home. Now that I am heading back, it seems a shock. I have a few things to say. Here we go.