Two hundred days in France! During the Spanish – American War of 1898 it took less than two hundred days for the USA to wrest away control of Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba from Spain but here I am, two hundred days into my assignment, still getting lost on the way to the train station. It makes me a little sad.
But then again, perhaps I have conquered something. Not in the imperialist sense, of course, although I suppose I could stick an American flag in the grounds of Luxembourg Gardens. (Knowing the French, however, I’d probably somehow set off a metro strike in doing so and then have to walk back home.) No, there are few conquests in the traditional sense but just look a bit closer – in the non-traditional world conquests thrive! They abound! Surely dancing with a broom counts for something (besides lunacy), or the climbing inside of a champagne vat…sampling whiskey inside the Dublin Jameson Distillery St. Patrick’s Day weekend, or maybe running to the top of St. Peter’s inside Vatican City? How about writing a Carnovergaard Christmas carole on the floor of an airport, or confusing a French tourist when he asked me where the Eiffel Tower was! In fact, I choose to consider them all conquests despite the fact that they will not soon make the pages of any textobook or Wikipedia link…
I also packed today. That’s something to hang my hat on, I suppose. I have a flight tomorrow evening, arriving in Valencia at 10:40 PM. If you add on some luggage pickup and drive time that puts me into the town of Denia at about 1:30 AM on Wednesday morning. I will salvage this late night / early morning travel experience the only way I know how – with Pringles.
