Vacation Done.

So here I am, Monday night, just had dinner and made it through my first day of work from vacation not only intact but feeling in good spirits all the same. My February vacation was a mix of relaxation, amity and idiosyncratic adventures. While I could have gone off and had some wild escapade somewhere on my own, I don’t think I would have come home with the same sense of warmth and harmony I feel after the two weeks spent with one of my greatest friends in the world: Julie G.

My first week in Bastia was definitely a shining moment in my current life here in France, but the second week was just as wonderful. Our story begins with an unfortunate turn of events when, the day after I left Corsica, Julie came down with another disabling cold (her third in a month). So when she flew into Lyon on Monday, we pretty much came straight home and spent the week here inside during which time I took care of her - whilst earning the nickname, ‘undertaker’ - and continuing our In Treatment marathon. We did manage to walk around Lyon for a few hours throughout the days and by the end of the week, Julie mustered enough energy to hop on a train to Geneva to visit an old acquaintance from Denison, Markus Bettels, who was an amazing host and showed us nothing but hospitality and kindness and who even bought us a $40 bottle of wine. Oh and Geneva was alright.

It’s a smaller city with a weird mix of old middle ages and 70s/80s “modern” architecture mashed together. Julie was still sick and we didn’t see a whole lot of the city but we did manage to visit the UN building where occurred one of the more humorous moments of our trip: forgetting we had a knife for our picnic lunch as we sent our bag through the x-ray machine. Opsie.

All in all, these past two weeks were very memorable and wonderful and I was really sad to see her off on Sunday. I really miss having a really, really close friend like that close by and friends like her are one in a million.