5 month mark

It's official... I've been in France for five consecutive months!

Now I realize that Parisian apartments are known for having loud neighbors (as are any big city apartment buildings), but I'm quite positive that the people living above us are the loudest, rudest, most annoying neighbors that ever existed. They stomp around, move furniture, scream, run, yell, all day and all night long... and they don't even have small children. Just this past weekend, while the parents were out of town, one of the kids decided it would be okay to have a raving 15th birthday party starting at 7pm and ending at 8... the next morning. It sounded like the party was going to come crashing into my bedroom from too many stomping stilettos. And this was at 7:30 in the morning. J-C went up there twice to tell them to be quiet and take off their footwear, but this was at midnight, so it clearly didn't work.

Instead, the little brats actually had the nerve to type a note to post in the elevator saying "I am celebrating my 15th birthday with a big party so please excuse the noise." I have some choice words I'd like to use with them, but instead I am going to keep my blog PG-rated and take my anger out on them by buzzing up to their apartment at all hours of the night whenever I feel like it. It's too hard for me to express my anger in French anyway... so I'll take the passive-aggressive route instead.

Deep breath.... anyway...

I've never been away from home for this long, and I recently fell off of an emotional cliff caused by a myriad of events in all aspects of my life that left me feeling unmotivated, uninspired and useless. The fall was pretty painful and it made me realize that I really need a break from this whole ex-pat experience thing. It's starting to make me act like a completely different person, and though I realize it's all part of the experience, all of that change is a little overwhelming right now. Sooooo I've decided to go back to Michigan for my second week of vacation (the first week of March) for a little rejuvenation. Just having that ticket in hand has already made me feel much better.