Free at last, free at last, merci Dieu j'ai liberté! And just in time for the 14th of July, France's Bastille Day. Celebrating liberty wil be so much sweeter knowing that I actually have it. 4th of July here was a slight let down... it's only a matter of time before you can't carry the weight of US any longer—we are a pretty overweight country. I was told by elderly friends (ok, the retired expats that I drink with during happy hour) that before 9/11 the American Embassy would open up and everyone with a blue passport (or English/South African anglophones) would crowd on the roofs, shoot off fireworks, and generally enjoy beverages. Those were the days. Now I'm pretty sure you would be shot on the spot for approaching the embassy with fireworks. At least in France the government still humbles itself to the level of disgruntled revolutionaries in the spirit of communal celebration.

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This past week family members started to pour into CDG to start their vacations (which I'm just about to join after finishing these blogs) and Sunday marked my grandparents departure from Paris in a rental car. One small issue. Or maybe a lot of them. Driving in Paris is hard, and my grandparents can't speak French. Finding traffic lights alone has been a struggle for me, but with persistance and many, many horns honked at me on my scooter, I mastered their locations as I have every late night bar and police checkpoint (those may or may not be mutually exclusive). In anyway, I was hired as the cheuffeur out to Tours (a city that I had previously been to earlier this week). Apart from waking up at the ungodly hour of 9am after a Saturday night and mini-celebration of completion of work, the drive wasn't too bad. I also had to make a couple stops at some slightly out-of-reach châteaux, which provided some break time and the slight urge to want to hurl myself off of the towers as to never see any more châteaux ever again (that is, unless I'm living in one because my extremely wealthy fiancée happened to aquire it after her father, the distant relative of the former Duke of Orléans passed away).

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After over 7 weeks living here and touring bars, hotels, sights, and bars (wait, I said that already, didn't I?), Paris has really grown on me. Or more accurately, I've grown on Paris. People come here and expect romance, architecture, and baguettes, and leave with a better understanding of Indian food, how to say "piss off" in Romanian, and maybe some minor salsa dacing skills. Being a fast paced, often cold city, Paris causes you to throw up your guard upon arrival, but it's not until you finally let that down that you learn a few things. Whether it's a healthy sense of skepticism, a better enjoyment of living life from one cup of espresso to the next, or blowing off that museum because it's sunny out, Paris forces you to change some behaviors. Like most changes, you'll try and fight it (and fail) but it's not until you give up and just go with it that you learn the place from the inside out and not the other way around.

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Working for Let's Go (especially the nightlife) has taken quite the toll on my body and health. Thankfully the medical care in France is ridiculously cheap (if you don't go to the American Hospital for an X-ray and consultation). You should know what you're up against. The phrase "pharmacie de garde" refers to the series of rotating 24hr. pharmacies open in the city. What they should be called is "pharmacie en garde." You know, like fencing, because it's more like battle than Benadryl.

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