Family bonding, teacher stuff, and planning ahead.

I know it has been way too long since I last posted, but I've been pretty busy with mostly boring stuff that you guys probably wouldn't be too interested in. Suffice it to say, there was an ear infection, some school stuff, and just general life stuff happening. It's been a while, but I don't have too much to tell you, to be honest. I've really connected with my new host-family here over the past few weeks, so there's that to talk about. An interesting story involving my 9- and 11-year-old kids asking me what Wal-Mart is, and the possibility of a summer job when I get back to the States in a few months. But that's about it. I may be in Paris, but I still have to do the boring, un-glamorous life stuff. And with seriously limited funds, I can't afford to do museums or monuments or anything like that if it costs money. So besides the fact that I live in Paris, my life is pretty normal. Just not much to tell at this point.

Milestones

Last weekend, I turned 21. In the States, that's a major milestone mostly for the drinking age. That's great and all, but it's not one of the things I've been looking forward to for a really long time. I've been able to drink legally here in France since my arrival in August, so to be honest, it wasn't really a big deal. But it was definitely a Birthday to remember. I'm not going to go into much detail here because it wasn't the partying and drinking that's worth remembering. Don't get me wrong, that was fun most of the time. Having a Metro car full of haughty Parisians sing "Happy Birthday" (in French) to me at the exact moment I turned 21 makes a really great story to tell, but that's not what made this Birthday special. It's the thinking I've done in the week since about my life in general; milestones like this one always make me think about where I'm going and what I'm doing, this one in particular because now I really am classified as an adult in pretty much every sense of the word. It's sorta a big deal.