La Vita

"I wanted to wander through Europe to hear pop songs that could not by even the most charitable stretch of the imagination be a hit in any country but their own, encounter people whose lives would never again intersect with mine, be hopelessly unfamiliar with everything, from the workings of a phone box to the identity of a foodstuff. I wanted to be puzzled and charmed, to experience the endless, beguiling of a continent where you can board a train and an hour later be somewhere where the inhabitants speak a different language, eat different foods, work different hours, live lives that are at once so different and yet so oddly similiar..."


-Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There
 
My friend Cindy sent me her favorite quote from a book she read while living in France.  I could never find a better way to describe life abroad.  It's this crazy mix of experiencing something new every time I step out my front door, of having amazing, interesting international friends, and at the same time having to relearn simple tasks like buying soap for the dishwasher (not as simple as you would think).  Everything is different.  But it is a fabulous kind of different.